By the first of June, it may seem that the best of the year is long past. It seems the best might have occurred in earliest spring, just before aconite and snow crocus bloomed, in the days before the cardinals and the doves and the robins sang at first light, the days before skunk cabbage bloomed in the swamp, the days before the trillium, the days before the first butterfly.
Still, throughout a universe in which beginnings and endings so often spiral together, days before are everywhere, even on the first of June:
The days before the fireflies flicker
the days before rhubarb pie
the days before the first strawberry turns red
the days before the first garden peas come in
the days before turtles lay their eggs in the warm river banks
the days before the wheat turns to gold
the days before the longest days of the year
the days before sweet corn and tomatoes ripen
the days before day lilies flower
the days before raspberry jam
the days before blackberries wine
the days before the Monarch butterflies visit the milkweed
Days before are not only outriders of the future but sweeten the events to come. They compound the seasons, prolong them, heighten them, encourage dreaming and fantasy, promise reasons for living, offer consolation, reminding that annual repetition is always news.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the third week of early summer. In the meantime, whatever you see is always a day before something else.
