Summer, it seems, is tapping on Spring’s shoulder. The leaves are full and deep green—no more sweet green fringe—and they sigh as the wind moves through them. The blackflies are nearly gone, and the mosquitos have taken their place. The ticks aren’t too bad even though Clif has been bitten once and needed to go on antibiotics as a preventative measure. I check myself when I come in and so far haven’t found any on me.

As a reminder that Spring hasn’t quite left, the peepers still sing at night. Such a sweet song. Here is a short YouTube audio for folks who have never heard this lovely sound.

I have been busy in the garden, moving slowly but steadily, getting the work done. Most of my focus has been on the gardens, but I did take time to make a potato salad to go with our Beyond Burgers—our first but certainly not last barbecue of the season.

As we ate, we listened to the gentle sound of the water in the fountain, a 60th birthday present from Dee, Shannon, and Mike.

Here are some late spring delights from the yard and garden.

A Jack-in-the-pulpit  between the edge of our lawn and the woods,

wood poppies, also on the edge of the yard,

and Solomon’s seal bending over sweet woodruff.

As always, I wish that Spring wouldn’t rush by so fast, that she would linger a little longer. But like a guest who never outstays her welcome, she will soon be off, letting Summer take her place.

Finally, spring has come to central Maine, to my home on the edge of the woods. I won’t say things are abloom in my yard. That would be going too far. My garden’s brief blast of color comes in middle June and lasts through July.

Instead, what I have is green, green, and more green. But as my blogging friend Quercus once reminded me, green is a color, too. Yes, it is, and when you live by the woods, green is what you mostly get in the spring.

I only had one fatality over the winter, a Jacob’s ladder, which I miss very much. Still, when you consider how cold it got one weekend in February—50°F below zero with the wind chill, so cold that the house cracked and snapped in protest—losing one plant isn’t too bad. I consider it a minor miracle that I didn’t lose more.

In Maine, May is the time to get cracking in the garden, to remove the blown-in leaves from the beds, to add compost and fertilizer, to move and divide plants. By the time June rolls around, the plants have grown to the point where adding much of anything is difficult and dividing and moving seem like a bad idea.

Therefore, out I go most every nice day, and despite my creaky knees, I am making good progress. Twice a week, Clif goes to our transfer station (aka the dump) to get free compost for me. And very good compost it is. For years, I’ve been getting compost from the transfer station, and, so far anyway, I have had no problems with pesty weed seed invading my beds.

The next few weeks will be busy ones for me as I get the gardens sorted. Blog posts will be short, but I will be sure to include pictures that document the progress of the green and growing things in my beds.

For starters, here is the picture of our woods, which is about 60 feet from our patio. I wish I could give you a better idea of the expanse of green that comes to the edge of our yard, but this picture, at least, gives some hint of it.

Here’s a view from the front. Green with a side order of green.

And here’s a side view.

But look a little more closely and you get bits of white.

And what’s this? A flash of purple in the back garden?

Yes, indeed. A lovely sign of things to come.