Door County Style

Norbert Blei’s RFD – Rural Free Delivery: MAY Notebook

Posted on 23. May, 2009 by Norbert Blei in Literature

Norbert Blei

Lilacs, dandelions… daffodils… mayflowers – a paper basket of them left on the door by local children every May Day. Wild asparagus, morel mushrooms, the many shades of green… roadside ditches getting some of their color back… the lawn growing into itself again, DO NOT DISTURB. Let it be. Let wild grasses and wildflowers grow. Ants finding their familiar pathways into the kitchen. Bats, back on target, on time, sweeping the darkness above old familiar houses, barns, and outbuildings. The local paper filled with HELP WANTED ads. Shops sprucing up for the first onslaught of tourists – Memorial Day. The county – back in business again.

Ah, inhale deep, deeper. Bury me here, deep beneath this patch of Lily of the Valley – that shade loving flower where nothing else will grow. My kind of flora.

The daily growth of rhubarb in the garden, almost tropical in color and dimension for this cold climate.

The first tour bus pulls up to “the restaurant with goats on the roof,” And the goats, sure-footedly begin posing for another long season of photo ops and the same old questions from the gawkers below: “How do they get up there?” “What do they do in winter?” “How come they don’t fall off?”

The weather here in May sometimes feels like November. Especially early May, the branches of the trees still bare, temperatures at night falling below freezing. Overcast skies and sharp wind. One day, the 70’s. The next evening the heat goes on and you find yourself reaching for Afghans, sweatshirts, the comfort of old, woolen sweaters. Autumn redux.

A back-and-forth time. A day of warmth followed by three days of cold. Followed by a string of warm days that bring back the Mayflies hovering in clouds over the streets of Sister Bay, waiting for your arrival. Batting the persistent pests away from face, eyes, nose, mouth as you enter the helter-skelter of their domain and try making a mad dash to any door that will let you in— Al’s, the Post Office, as far away from the bay as possible.

The season of threats and seductions… severe thunder showers and tornado watches “tornado touchdowns in adjacent counties” temperatures seesawing each day from cold to warm, sometimes reaching the 80’s. A time for taking down storm windows, putting up screens, opening windows and doors. A time of throwing bedroom windows high to a warm May night, lying awake, receptive to whatever the darkness holds for you – night air smelling of woods and lilacs, a sky speckled with stars, waves of cool breeze cast over a stifling day.

Mostly it’s a month of uncertainty. A month trying to get hold of itself. Ridding itself of the last vestiges of winter, be it cold temperatures, frost, fog, wind, dismal gray skies, inching forward with a little warmth, a little more hope. This too shall pass: bare branches, fields tangled in autumn’s dead grasses. There, barely a hint of green.

A time of turning over the garden. Fertilizing the soil. Preparing to plant. Buying tomato plants – but not setting them out yet – the fickleness of frost in these parts. Tomatoes not to be planted with any assurance till after Memorial day. Making row upon row for onion sets. Getting down on hands and knees, working the soil, slightly drunk in the scent and the juicy promise of large onions to come. Digging long trenches under the watchful eyes of red potatoes. Covering them carefully with a prayerful pat. May their tribe increase.

Watching the red rhubarb turn fire, explode in an extravaganza of leaf. Cutting thick stalks of strawberry rhubarb the same month. Rhubarb custard pie. Rhubarb torte. Rhubarb this, rhubarb that, rhubarb everything. All good.

Thrashers, rose breasted grosbeaks, gold finches, warblers, waxwings return, hawks circling the sky. At dusk, the first sound of the whippoorwill. I open the bedroom window that night, listen to their nocturnal telegraphy “1 2 3 4 5 6″ counting myself to sleep…

The first porcupine appear along the driveway, strolls into the open garage looking for something to feast on. The ugliest, dumbest, most useless creature on earth. I recall a neighbor taking a shovel to them. A 2×4. A rifle. I stand and stare-down the spring intruder trapped in my garage, wishing it would go away, go back where it came from. Disappear into the woods. Go visit my neighbor with the gun. I don’t have the heart for violence. I want no guilt in its demise. I consider again the threat this creature imposes: how it can gnaw away at the center-post of my garage, chew up the wooden handles of tools, target my dog’s inquiring muzzle with quills. Instead, I fall-back on old, less violent solutions. I raise my voice, take a broom to it, sweep the ugly creature back into the woods. Look forward to that time of year when porcupines disappear.

Not the ‘merry month of May,’ but the wild month of May.

The month when cherry and apple orchards explode in white blossoms. When tufts of trillium re-emerge in the woods around birch and maple, trumpeting the forest floor with large white flowers, three-petals that bow and fold and fade to pink and lavender in the weeks to follow.

The month when tiny forget-me-nots light up in the earth in luminous luscious blue patches that cannot be forgotten in the whitest of white winters past or forthcoming.

The month, when nearing its end, trees finally unfurl their branches to the blue skies with canopies of full leaves and emerald light, maple, beech, pine, oak, birch branches mingled in the woods, diffusing light upon the forest floor over flowering plants, the remnants of last autumn’s leaves… the roadsides, the far woods, the horizon thick with variations on the theme of green.

This is the month of Memorial Day, the last Monday of the month, the remembrance of things past, the sacrifice of others so seasons like this can be cherished and continued. Blow the bugle. Raise the flag. Remember the home of the brave. The lost. White crosses and weathered tombstones. Give thanks. Honor the silence. Pause, then strike up the band. Get on with the daily chores. The business of living. The beginning of ‘THE season’. The first holiday weekend of the year when tourists, remembering to remember, descend in hordes to getaways like this, delighting in `back to nature’/back to shopping treks, reaping the change of scenery, change of pace. A renewed sense of life. The natural beauty this particular peninsula provides in quiet splendor. Good earth. Clear water. Fresh air. Take a deep breath, Take another.

“Welcome back, May” on the lips in the hearts on the minds of everyone, bowing gently to seasons of transition, earth transforming itself before one’s very eyes, turning another day-in-the-life-of-spring to our favor once again.

Find more of Norb Blei’s latest publications at Blei’s Door County Times and his Poetry Dispatches at www.poetrydispatch.wordpress.com.

Tags: Memorial Day