What May Does~

Spring's awakening has always felt like a rebirth, a fresh start full of possibilities. The dark days wane, and the slowness I embraced during my Wintering no longer serves me. There is a stirring happening all around, and if you listen, you can hear it, if you stop and look, you can see it, and if you truly listen, you can feel it.

“Some Winters are so long you can forget what Spring does, until it does it.
” {James A.Pearson}

May is the month of magic. The seedlings I’ve tended to in the rickety old greenhouse are ready to break free from their pots. Though the earth is still cool, the garden beds have been amended with mushroom compost, worm castings, coco coir and good intentions. Spring's beauty is everywhere the light touches.

As the daffodil, tulip, crocus, and hyacinth fade, redbud, hawthorn, plum, serviceberry, magnolia and lilac aloof with buzzing bees, filling the air with the sweetest scent of Joy. The woodland under Mama Maple is covered in a blanket of Virginia bluebells, wild ginger, wood poppy, spring beauty, trout lily, bloodroot and wild geranium. The wild turkeys have returned. Robins, cardinals, finches clothed in their yellow Spring attire, thrashers, sparrows, grackles, woodpeckers, hawks, wrens, kinglets, red-winged blackbirds, and mourning doves call this wild place I’ve created Home. 

I’ve been rewilding our acreage for well over 22 years. When we first purchased this land, it was swathed in a well-manicured lawn. Void of gardens, missing the wild, longing and wanting to be a safe haven for the rooted and unrooted. It all began with a vision and a dream, and a longing for a meaningful connection to the Earth. We planted Native and non native trees, big ones, tiny seedlings, understory trees, shrubs, native perennials and grasses. We dug a pond. We slowly transitioned the largest carpet of lawn into a wildflower meadow with a meandering path. There’s a bat house and nesting boxes for our feathered friends. Those trees are giants
now, and there’s a wild magic you can feel when you pull down the laneway. My heart is planted here.

Spring is full of promise, where each new day miracles unfurl leaf by leaf, and petal by
petal. Seasonal living is about slowing down, connecting to Nature, grounding oneself,
disconnecting from social media, being mindful and noticing the natural beauty all around us. Hug a tree, start a garden, get your hands dirty, hike local trails, pet some moss, hang a bird feeder and learn some of our local feathered friends' names. Plant a native tree, grow your own food, add birdhouses and bird baths to your backyard, walk barefoot on the grass, sow a wildflower pocket in that unused space in the corner of your yard, and feast on seasonal produce like rhubarb and asparagus.

The healing powers of Nature are all around us, waiting to forge a connection with you. Whenever I’m feeling less than happy, on the days I feel a little lost, when the burdens of every day life feels a bit too heavy for me to carry on my own, a simple walk outside in the fresh air with the Soleil beaming on my face fills me with a sense of belonging, lifts my spirits and reminds me that Joy is everywhere the light touches.

“Sometimes, since I’ve been in the garden, I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy, as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In the garden~in all the places.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Written By: Melissa Gagnon

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