May is big sky month. The clouds are more summer like. The sky cobalt blue. The vivid green of new growth sets off the every changing sky scenery.

Salmonberries wave in May’s gentle breezes. Another month from now their tart red berries will make my face wrinkle when I eat them.

Nature reminds me constantly that everything is eaten by something. In my hunt for where the ducks on the pond are laying their eggs, yesterday I uncovered new nests with a few eggs. And in thick growth I found a mother lode. Twelve eggs in a single nest, only all the eggs had been eaten. My worry about waking up one morning and finding several hundred ducklings in the pond evaporated. Some lucky creature is much better than I am at finding the ducks’ hidden nests.

Last night, on my last venture outside to check on the chickens before going to bed, I looked up and saw the path of a jet on its way west across the Pacific. From here, the Far East is really the Far West. Though if you think about it, no matter where you are, every place else is west of you, just as it is east of you. Or are you supposed to imagine that everything is west of you until you get to the point halfway around the world, and everything west of that is east of you? Something to ponder when I go hunting for more duck nests around the pond.