May's Siren Song....Resistance is Futile!

[This is reaching the list well after I began writing it in early May. Life got a bit busy and Earth Pilgrim was relegated to the back seat for a while :-) So here is my annual Spring tribute published a few days after Summer Solstice! The two photos may be viewed in larger size by clicking on them. Please enjoy...]

Early May, 2013 in New York's Southern Tier:

She's at it again...Gaia, aka Mother Earth. Sweet seductress, she's been busy here these past two weeks or so luring us out-of-doors with her fabulous Spring regalia and blue-skied balmy days. This year our patience felt all the more stretched with Winter's chill and even snow flurries lingering into early April. But then at last, a mild night, and the Spring peepers burst into their annual welcoming chorus, their sweet soprano-jingling drifting up from the River's marshy edges to me leaning out my bedroom window peering into the velvet dusk. My willing re-enchantment beginning once more...

Every Spring I am smitten by the delicate Beauty of the wooded hills coming alive again and never tire of beholding this magical, ethereal transformation. My winter-dulled senses feast on the richness of color, sound, and scent spilling onto the landscape. This year is no different...possibly even more so. The maples put on the gauzy red veils of their exquisite, tiny blossoms. The other hardwoods offer a fabulous array of pastel greens and shimmering golds. Robert Frost's line always comes to mind, "Nature's first green is gold." This photo taken a few days ago of a hillside near Masonville will give some idea of what this is. Overnight as it often seems, the willows are suddenly flaunting their neon yellow-green streamers, soon to be rivaled in brilliance by the forsythia's eye-popping yellow-gold.  
 
Then for us this Spring of 2013, a sumptuous bonus of two weekends in a row with bright sun and cloudless skies, temps rising into the 60s and low 70s. Sandals, shorts, and sleeveless shirts were hastily dug out of storage. Wherever I went people smiled giddily at each other, all of us blissed-out by the sun's returned warmth on our bare skin and the fabulous pleasure of color returning everywhere about us in Spring flowers and gem-green lawns. It may or may not be so, but the daffodils and tulips have seemed particularly radiant this year. 

Out for a walk today I am close to mesmerized by trees spangled with their miniature new leaves winking and glistening in the bright Sun. And I am no less in awe this Spring by the countless shades of green lavished across the landscape, at times close to dizzy with such extravagance.

Yesterday's rain conjured a heady perfume from the warming earth, its life-force stirring from deep down. The woods behind Dragonfly Cottage grows busier and pleasantly noisier each day with welcome arrivals of the returning "regulars", the robins, song sparrows, grackles, and hopefully soon, my favorites, the saucy cat birds and the shy wood thrushes. It is the haunting notes of the thrush that will complete the spell to which I so happily submit myself. And the first dandelions are already offering their fuzz-ball seedheads, poised to release their countless wishes to the next breeze. 

The Earth falls slowly towards the full and golden light of Solstice some six weeks away. Nothing more to do but surrender to May's siren song yet again. Ah-h-h, Yes!