After so many weary months of dormant plants, one is lulled into an annual ignorance about what it means once those photosynthetic engines get started. May (re)sets the record straight, bringing riotous plant growth and all that comes with it:

• bird songs and sightings every which way

• blossoming trees, including the flowers that will eventually bring us 10,000 pears

• rhubarb pie

• so much f*cking grass to manage

If you happen to take a vacation spend several weeks in grueling pain due to multiple monstrously large kidney stones, it’s easy to fall behind on vegetation management. I’m blaming the kidney stones, but in reality we’ve never not been behind. But then I remember that my favorite colleagues are plants, and that dilly dallying will only make things worse. (No offense to my human collaborators! We do terrific human work!)

Much of this spring bonanza is ephemeral. What exactly are these specimens doing the rest of the growing season? Take mayapples. Their colonies are indetectable for 90% of the year, but right on time, you can’t help by notice the patches that grow along the old fence line in the north remnant in May. According to Wikipedia, all parts of the mayapple are poisonous, “wild mandrake” is one of its common names, and it can be used to treat warts and some cancers. If you want to spot its flower, you need to go low, down under the leaves. What an elusive badass.

Aside from the wild native plants, the grasses and fruit trees start to overwhelm with their biomass production, but we have things almost in hand. Lopping off giant overgrowth during the late winter pruning hasn’t curtailed the blossoms, and it only takes a few hours to buck up the fire-worthy wood and drag the brush for eventual chipping. The 5-year old electric mower and the 75-year old tractor show about the same level of fussiness in awaking from their own dormant period. In the end, they both start up and take their turn.