May Day

Happy first day of May.

We are having a cold spring. But I expect it to be like this and so I don’t have pronouncements to make on whether this is good, bad, or otherwise.

It just is.

Since our return from Montreal last Sunday I have eased back into routine here - home, Sanctuary family (Mom, Dad and my nephew), paid work, gardening, and some community stuff.

Watching Habs playoff games with the family on Dad’s big screen have been a highlight for me this past week.

The cold and the rain has kept my outdoor garden activities to a minimum. The perennial bed is still a mess and all the dead material is providing cover for the various critters, predominantly invertebrates, that overwinter in organic detritus.

We have a toad that lives in the perennial garden. Toads spend winters hibernating below the frost line. I wonder if it’s up at the surface now hiding under the matted and decaying foliage of last summer’s growth?

Speaking of amphibians, the spring peepers have been peeping since early April.

I first made note (literally a note in my land journal) of hearing them on April 6 when I was driving home from my one and only (so far) choir practice. (Participation in this community choir is still up in the air for me.) At that date they weren’t peeping near our house yet but they were active in nearby Riverport, where the choir meets.

I heard our neighbourhood peepers within a few days of the Riverport gang. They’re a little ways from the house, in a ditch along the river road. You can hear them from the Sanctuary but their chorus isn’t particularly loud. (I wouldn’t mind if it was louder.)

You can see the spot I’m referring to and hear the peepers in this short section of a video I posted to YouTube last year at this time.

Coming from the city where there were no spring peepers in my very urban environment, I am especially delighted by the sounds and sight of amphibians, evidence of relatively unpolluted soil and waterways.

Hearing them each spring is a reassurance of the renewal of life but also a reassurance that the conditions still exist for that renewal. I am deeply grateful for both.

Spring can be hectic, but cold and rainy days slow everything down. Spring’s tendency to speed up and speed along makes me a little nervous because I am unable to sustain a go-go-go pace.

I’ve been reflecting on my limitations and capacities in another piece of writing, which I hope to publish next week.

The week before our trip to Montreal was fuller than usual for me in terms of activity, plus it had a deadline, our flight out of Halifax on the Saturday morning. Deadlines always add stress to the schedule as you have to complete things, in this case, starting seeds and managing garden stuff before our 9 day absence.

These are enjoyable activities and happy plans. I love gardening, I’m delighted by my seedlings, and I was excited to go to Montreal. (That was such a great trip! I’m still feeling the glow.) But that week before our trip was intense and I can’t sustain that intensity.

Spring has an inherent gathering momentum energy.

This momentum scares me a bit because unmindful participation in it (It’s spring! Let’s do all the things!) can lead to exhaustion. In this way, spring feels a bit like an enchanting siren song, mariners beware.

Turns out I published these very same feelings and internal cautionary stance on the first of April. This is obviously a theme for me this year. (I have some thoughts on why that is but not enough time to work through them here right now. Hormones are involved, see this post for more of that.)

I think that how I’m experiencing my desires, energy, and capacity in this life season (age and stage) is part of why I feel ambivalent towards the cold, the rain, the grey of this spring.

Yes, it’s a bit of a downer. It can be hard to keep the pep in your step, emotionally and energetically on consistently grey days, but those dampening effects can also help keep a runaway spring momentum in check.

The weather is reminding me that the next 6 months—my garden season here on the South Shore—is a marathon not a sprint. (Of note to other gardeners, the growing season starts very slow here but it extends long into fall.)

This vibe, as the kids would say, mirrors my own life energy these days, less capacity for the sprint, aiming for sustainability.