Welcome to May

Take a gander at all the seasonal produce in the grocery stores this May! Stone fruits and berries are beginning to make their grand appearance, and some delicate greens are thriving in these springtime months. Before we get to the full list of fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs in season, enjoy this meditation from Thomas Hardy entitled “Growth in May”:

I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,
And thence thread a jungle of grass:
Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand
Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,
And seem to reveal a dim sense
That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green
They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,
That range not greatly above
The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,
And HER gown, as she waits for her Love.

Near CHARD.

Whoo! That last line is definitely endorsing eating seasonally– not at all referring to the town of Chard where the poem was written. Here’s what’s in season in the mid-Atlantic region: