Nope, not wisteria...

Fri May 1, 3 pm. Trace of rain, 60s, everything smells good. Black flies seem more numerous or are flying lower, maybe cause it's not windy and quite damp. Trees across the pond are full of greenish yellows now. Wisteria leaves are like little upturned fingers bunched together, getting ready to open.

Sat May 2 10 pm. Moon around it's zenith, halo'd by orange in a band of high clouds. Peepers. Something in the north pond making a rasping noise, about a second long. One star visible to the East, with an occasional blue twinkle in it. Parts of the big dipper visible. Two spots of activity in the leaves, one to the right, one to the left. A rustle here, a rustle there. Charged, semi-magical feeling.

Sun May 3, mid afternoon. The wisteria are opening, revealing 5 leaves. Virginia Creeper?! Plant X, up near the house where it's found a spot in gravel with no competition, has formed a stem which is round, about 1/4 inch thick, fleshy or watery, leaves clasp stem in alternate fashion, looks more familiar. Like something I've pulled up a lot later in the season, a 'despised' weed. My feelings are conflicted: "Oh, it's 'just' that?" (even though I don't know it's Latin or vulgar name). But down next to my sit spot it remains part of the whole. Off to the side I notice a fat black ant. Do they care for wet woodsy places? I look at the grass some more. There are 3 types I think. 2 have the 'velcro' trait -- run your finger one way and it catches on something too small to see, a bit uncomfortable. Seems to run along the edges and midpoint, one seems to have more of it than the other, or maybe it's older. The day has been densely cloudy and with slow sprinkles a lot of the time, upper 50s, quiet. There're a lot of smells, something smells a bit like licorice to me.

Wed May 6, late afternoon. My first mosquito. Black flies still about. Wisteria seed wrinkled. Got 1/2 of rain last night. Sun now. Monday I sat and there was a wind and I saw the beech leaves and branches moving in the wind and it was like a whole new wind language had emerged: wind in leaves, and the beech tree branches weren't reaching up so much as now they carried the weight of the leaves, the whole balance had shifted. The beech leaf color continues to amaze. There's yet another herb just sprouting, although how it's going to do amongst all these front runners I don't know. Charlie said one of my little herbs looked like a young aster, and were the underside of the leaves purple, and, lo and behold, they were. Just the bottom leaves. I'd looked at that plant a number of times and never flipped the leaf up.

Sat May 9, dusk. All of a sudden it's a race to the top. The average height of everything growing around me -- grass, bedstraw, Virginia creeper, golden alexander -- is 9 inches with some things a foot tall. The grass has really bolted in the last few days, round stems with leaves sticking off them. And then the maple trees are suddenly there in a whole new way, so sure of themselves with their leaves almost full, moving in the strong, damp breeze. Cloudy again -- we've had another .8 inches of rain with some sunny breaks here and there. Something keeps flying by trilling, do bats sing? Kind of like the duck sounds but it's moving back and forth. The peepers, the real soprano ones, are a steady noise but the ear is drawn to another rythmic trill, this one more of an alto. Near me something cheeps loudly, I suspect a lost amphibian. A few last bird calls; one very melodious, another blackbird chirp, then silence. The beech is fuller but quieter tonight compared to the maples. The maple to the North towers over me, I realize the drip line from the top leaves, 50 or 60 feet up, almost reaches me. A few rattles in the dead ground leaves here and there. The pond has some rippled spots, some smooth, the smooth lee seems to run along the East shore so perhaps the wind is predominantly east? The leaves all around are moving in various eddies of air, definite wind but not steady. And the pond is broken here and there by the water lily leaves now. Even Plant X has bolted, now it has upward reaching stems and the leaves are reaching up. I have about six black fly bites and a touch of poison ivy rash from the last week, but tonight no bugs find me. Oh, and the quince is full of beautiful pink buds, little conical spiral patterns with the 5 calyx arranged just so around them.