THE EMERALD DAYS OF MAY

The quality of life in May is high. Prime Time, I'd call it; "Glad Days and Peaceful Nights," being broadcast on all stations with rhubarb pie and strawberry shortcake separating main events.

The dawn comes in green-gold. Sunbeams glance off leaves which reflect on neighboring leaves, multiplying the glittering facets. No wonder May is called the Emerald month.

After the birds have sung their paeans of praise for the gift of another new day, they begin the serious business of finding food for their enormous energy needs. The rosy-breasted house finchs line up, four in a row on each side of the house type feeder and all up and down the cylindrical feeder. They eat fast at the former for they know the bigger birds will soon fly in, assert their rights by mights and they will have to vacate that breakfast bar for a while.

Occasionally a fragrance from the mock orange and May roses drifts across the lawn as if Mother Nature is pressing some spray perfume bottle. Sometimes I get impatient with the slow dispensing and take my folding chair to sit close in under the towering mock orange, letting the long, drooping flowering branches fall around my shoulders, thus inserting myself inside the perfume bottle. If I sit still the bumblebees accept me as part of the bush and keep on bumbling from flower to flower, dizzy with the return of pollen and nectar.

Sometimes I can even feel the air disturbance from their wings as they come close to my cheeks. I sit, fearless, whispering to myself, "I'm a part of all this," at one with the bees, the bush, the filtered sunshine.

I cannot keep my hands away from the soil these days. So, with new trowel in hand I scratch around the four tomato plants and the one Bell pepper. Maybe, on another day the scratching will be around the poppies, the marigolds or whatever else looks as if it needs some soil disturbance.

My old, trusty trowel that fits my palm so well, finally wore out. Broke right in two about an inch from the handle joint. I knew it was getting weary. Thirty years for a trowel is old. I thought about retiring it to a nail in the garage. But, giving it human characteristics which I tend to do for many things, I thought it would rather wear out than rust out, so I used it until it broke. I buried it right there at the edge of the garden, where it finally gave up. Didn't erect a headstone though. Some future gardener may dig it up and think that a negligent person lost her/his trowel.

My new trowel has an unpainted oak handle and declares that it is made in the U.S.A. of chromed steel. Says "No. 1," too. I'm sure that means something like size but I like to think it is of NO. 1 quality and will last another thirty years! A codicil to my last testament will state, "The No. 1 chromed steel trowel hanging on the third nail on the south side of the garage, between the two gallon bucket and a length of log chain, is to be given to the next tenant who agrees to cultivate around the hollyhocks at the end of the walk leading westward."

The present hollyhocks grow faster than corn. I hammered in a sturdy, tall stake to tie them to. Three days later they were six inches above the stake with bowed stalks as if begging for something a little taller. Some garden tool company should come up with extendable, telescoped stakes that can be raised along with the growth of the plants. Why do I put all my good ideas in the public domain?

Part of May's magic for me is locating all the "live" bird nests I can. By "live," I mean those full of eggs to be hatched or full of baby birds already new to the world. So far, I've located two nestfuls of baby robins. There are wrens in the ceramic wren house. I can't see how many, but the bird books says I might expect from four to nine. I doubt there are nine. Maybe five or six. But this mother wren will, almost always, raise a second family this summer. She likes a new house though. That's why I keep four hanging at different spots. No rent. No taxes. Cat proof. Just bring your own twigs.

What else can be better than May strawberry festivals, visiting iris and rose gardens, thoroughly examining the hedgerow, attending Antebellum Southern Teas, inhaling the sweet smell of summer rain? June!

REJOICE!