Here They Come! May 2024

May is more than fulfilling her flowering promise to Topsmead.  Following on the heels of the cheerful yellows of forsythia, daffodils, and dandelions, here come the more delicate pinks, lavenders, light blues, and whites of cherry and apple trees, lilacs, periwinkle, violets, bluets, and mock orange. 
 
And here come the bobolinks gathering material to make their nests in the Topsmead hay fields that soon will be tall enough to provide good cover for their soon-to-be-laid eggs.  Enjoying the symphony of bird songs one late afternoon as I was looking west over Underhill from the veranda of Miss Edith's cottage, I wondered what birds I was hearing.  "Hey," I said to myself, "I could use my newly-downloaded Merlin Bird ID app created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to identify the bird songs."  Lo and behold, the picture of a bobolink popped up as a likely singer, and just then, I was excited to see my first bobolink of the season go winging by.  Ah, so that is what the males look like with their recognizable buff heads. 
 
Inside Miss Edith's house, here come the Friends of Topsmead volunteer docents working with DEEP employees Cindy McPhee and Chris King to ready Miss Edith's house for the 2024 June to October house tour season.  First on the list is to take down the winter curtains, label and store them, and put up the summer curtains.  Before putting up the summer curtains, the winter storm windows must come down and be replaced by the summer screens.  Then, off come the protective winter coverings (really just a conglomeration of old sheets, pillowcases, old curtains, and random lengths of fabric) from the furniture, the lamps, the pictures on the walls, and any house accessories.  After cobwebbing, dusting, polishing, and vacuuming and buffing the floors, next comes arranging furniture, putting down rugs, and setting up table tops with appropriate accessories so that the house resumes its lived-in look. 
 
Following the warming weather, here come the human visitors to Topsmead:  the walkers, the dog walkers, the trail riders from Lee's Riding Stable, the picnickers, the sun worshippers with their lawn chairs and Sunday papers, the wedding parties with their photographers.  And the landscape of Topsmead welcomes them all, just as Miss Edith intended when she bequeathed this property at the "top o' the meadow" to the people of CT.
 
Whether you come here for the flowers, the birds, the house tours, the exercise, the serenity, or whatever, why not share your special reason for coming by writing it into the comment box below? And when you do come, be sure to send a silent thank you to Miss Edith for the gift of Topsmead. 
 
 
Margaret Hunt
BlogMistress