You almost never hear anything about May. It just seems to slip by us as it is so gentle on our senses. Other months, like July, you got July 4th, and December is always front and center when it comes, and January is the New Year, and April, the cruelest month. But May? Man, it is just here and so sweet we soak it in as if it were a natural part of our body and then it is gone, and June turns on full of solid green, and hot, and diving off the dock.

But to me, and it has always been this way, May is the meaning of life, the high point of the year, the month of astonishing beauty, freedom, and action. A day in May is unlike any other and it doesn’t matter if the day is like now with the sky low and the morning’s rain dripping on the pond from the overhanging maples, or, if it is with a bright blue cloudless sky like yesterday with the beehives in a rush hour and the daffodils yellow and juicy. It just doesn’t matter. It’s May and if there is a fire in the wood stove, that’s fine, or if the smarter of the chickens come through the dog slit in the screen door to raid the dog food bowl next to the piano, that’s just fine too.

Sure, the gravel lane needs fixing after a wet spring and the fields are waiting for the final tilling, but the days are longer and if you want to take some hours for yourself there is plenty to look for in your quiet moments.

The male wood duck joins the poppa goose on the deep green water of the pond as they wait for the females to complete the incubation of the stirring eggs.

My Warwick birding friends report the warblers are in their trees and so keep a keen lookout for them this week. The warblers are opening their door to the north of the county and their migration should last a week or more. They go through right now, while the leaves are small as thumbnails and the tree canopy is essentially open and bright. You have a chance to see them on their short flights, one tree to the next, as they travel their thousands of miles, flight by flight, tree by tree, ever northward. There are dozens of warbler types, black and white, yellow, yellow and green, greys, dashes of red and rust. Some species of warbler love the high boughs, while others travel the center of the woods, yet others love the low brush and ground as if it were all planned to limit competition for the insects most common in each niche.

Pick up any rock in a woodland and you will likely see a spotted salamander, or something even more exotic.

Wild violets are in high bloom.

Two days ago, I was transfixed by a family of vultures, a kettle, circling overhead, not high overhead, maybe a couple hundred feet, circling round and round in a tight pattern to each other, not beating a single wing, just floating while mother nature herself propelled them effortlessly northward to their nesting sites.

Beekeepers have announced, usually with a tinge of regret that they have not taken antiswarming procedures before now, the arrival of swarm season, as high-powered, successful beehives have swarmed out with the old queen and half the workers have left their home in a driven quest to build a new colony and perpetuate their species. If you see a honeybee swarm, do not be alarmed. Watch where is goes; see where it lands. In the middle of that mass of bees is the queen. Call me, 845-568-7382, or call another beekeeper, as these bees can be given another home where they will be cared for, and their superior genetics preserved.

Rain or shine, get outside. Enjoy our parks and rail trails and open space and encourage our local pols to preserve MORE OF IT as our points of connection to nature are filling up and overused and stressed. Did you know, now, on a weekend or holiday, you must make a reservation just to get into Sam’s Point? That should tell us locals something.