By James McGuire

Contributing columnist

May is spring’s final full month…and we’ve already raced past its midway mark!

How can this journey through time and season happen so fast?

Not all that long ago, we finished up with this year’s portion of last year’s winter. The equinox passed. Spring duly arrived!

So what happened to that sweet old notion of a new year’s vernal weeks unfolding at a gentle amble? This feels more like a sprint!

However, that’s the way May has always seemed to me.

May is my favorite month in my favorite season. Spring’s zenith, its pinnacle, the vernal period’s crowning weeks.

I look forward to May all year long, and can hardly wait for the month to get here.

Then—finally!—comes that banner day when I flip the calendar’s page. April is officially over and May stands in the dooryard! A wondrous fact!

Hooray! The month I anticipated and desperately longed to see is now here! Mine to delight in and enjoy!

Except once it finally arrives, May rushes along at breakneck speed. Instead of the expected sedate flow, my most coveted month sweeps along like a flooded river in full spate.

“Spring comes too slow, and passes too fast,” my mother liked to say. Mom loved flowers—wildflowers, garden flowers, perennials, and annuals.

After enduring months of bleak winter, with only a few modest blooms from houseplants she kept on sunny windowsills, spring—and its floral outpouring—was both her salvation and treasure. Mom simply wanted ample time to savor this soul-pleasuring gift.

But time, as she often cautioned me, waits for no one. Spring inevitably unfolds in a headlong rush.

Yet this rushing river is at least a lively, invigorating green rather than a dull, muddy brown! A vivid, chlorophyll-infused torrent that has not only colorized our landscape but transformed the view of things.

Think back a couple of weeks. Remember how our yards, fields, and woodlands looked at April’s end?

Leafing out was just beginning—visibly underway, but the overall coverage still remained notably sparse.

Though lawns and grassy meadows had indeed turned from winter’s sere neutrals to the envisioned spring green—and thus obviously on their way to lushness—trees and bushes were less advanced, lagging in their seasonal dressing. You could still see their underpinnings, the more substantial framework structures of limbs and branches and twigs.

New leaves on my backyard sycamores were no bigger than a playing card—small and sparse; semi-transparent. You could easily spot the big tree’s whitewashed limbs. A sort of pseudo-x-ray look at their pale wooden bones.

Moreover, looking across the channel from the cottage to the island, and its covering jungle of wild vegetation, I could see into and through this dense maze of trees and understory bushes. Plus my view extended all the way across the far channel and its overgrown bank, to the open field beyond!

Now, however, two weeks later, my view stops immediately at the island’s nearest edge—blocked by an impenetrable wall of green! The sycamore’s leaves are the span of my doubled hands—effectively cloaking the tree’s interior.

April gets spring off to a glorious start, then May takes over and does the heavy lifting!

In the short span since May arrived, it’s as if a mega-sized paint bomb has exploded, spraying a layer of verdant green everywhere—while at the same time, kicking plant growth into supercharged high gear!

Our span of daylight continues to increase. We’ve already gained well over half an hour since the first of May—and almost two and a half hours since spring began!

The daylight length will keep on increasing—but only for a short while.

Spring never lingers.

Three weeks after June begins, we’ll mark another solstice. Spring will give way to summer—and each day thereafter, our span of light will be incrementally reduced, as we begin the inevitable down-slope into winter’s darkness.

Seems impossible, huh? We’ve hardly settled into enjoying these long and lovely days. There are still plants and seeds to get into the ground. Birds yet on the nest, warblers passing through.

A few crappie are still spawning. Bluegills are just beginning to fan out dish-shaped beds. My beloved stream smallmouth are on the prowl and eager to bite!

Can the summer solstice and its subsequent daylight-reversing commencement countdown really be that close?

I’m afraid so. Not that summer isn’t a pleasant enough season—at least until it gets hot and muggy, and every field hike entails dealing with insufferable tick hoards.

Too, if you’re not a cicada fan, this is probably not going to be your favorite summer—though our corner of Ohio is barely on the edge of the predicted but rare dual-brood emergence. We may see increased numbers, but the touted—and dreaded!—trillions of ratcheting, buzzing, screeching insects expected elsewhere will probably not make it into the Buckeye State.

I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed. A once-in-a-lifetime eclipse, followed by a once-in-a-lifetime cicada hatch, seems like rather bookended natural events—cosmic kismet.

What I am sure about is that time is an ephemeral dimension, ceaseless in its eternal progression. It can’t be held back and should never be wasted.

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