When the month began, I was putting a fire in the fireplace to knock the chill out of the house in the morning. We’re past that now. I’ve cleaned the fireplace and spread the ashes over some garden beds. But most mornings are still chilly to me, about 60 degrees.
I walk the dog wearing a sweatshirt. By afternoon, I’m sweating over a shovel, with temperatures in the 80s. The Wise Woman is planting bulbs.
The big change in May has been in the foliage: trees, shrubs, vines. Everything is putting out leaves. Six weeks ago, we walked through a spring thunderstorm in the woods south of Stone Mountain. When we flushed two deer, we watched them run for a hundred yards. Now the vegetation is so dense you can’t see 10 feet through the brush.
The biologists talk about biomass. Collectively, the leaves in those trees weigh tons. They catch the wind, and you can hear it. The dense foliage catches the wind like sails. I don’t get tired of seeing 70-foot trees waving like grass.
All this month, I’ve been watching southern dewberries ripen. Rubus trivialis is everywhere in the Georgia Piedmont. An earlier version of me would have been picking berries and making jelly.
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