Here we are, the last few days of May, and we are sore, both my husband and I, to the point that it is difficult to sleep. I see some dried blood in his ear. My clawish hands couldn’t open a spice jar today. We both wounded our big toes in separate incidents yesterday afternoon, a weird kind of synchronicity. Last weekend, I found a tiny tick stuck in my shoulder blade exactly where my achy arms can’t reach. I called my husband to remove it but his eyesight still hasn’t recovered from a surgery last winter, so we called our son to come from the garden. He showed up with tweezers and a lighter. But we’d run out of coffee that morning, so our son’s hands, always a little shaky, were even more palsied.

Whatever. These are minor, micro-complaints, tiny gnats really, compared to the wall of beauty that hits us in the face every single morning when we step outside. In May, Mother Nature is a show-off prima ballerina and we are her eager audience, applauding like mad every grand jete, every fouetté.

Experience it for yourself in this two-minute video I made last Saturday morning. Annabel Lee, pictured above, does a cute stunt. Coco, my darling old hen named for Coco Chanel by a darling friend, is no longer with us. RIP Coco.

Photo of Annabel Lee by me.