Earlier this week I happened to look out the kitchen window when a fawn and her mama walked into the yard. They were nibbling the “deer-proof” forcythia. Then the fawn picked her way back to the maple in the far corner by the brush pile and curled up under it and her mom wandered away. The little one stayed nestled under the tree, almost invisible, all day.

I was a wee bit concerned and placed a call to in-the-know friends who confirmed that this is normal. Apparently does find a safe place to stash their babies and leave them there, coming back to check on them periodically. All week I’ve seen the mom come and go leaving her fawn stashed away in the weeds for hours at a time.

This morning I was making coffee when two female deer wandered into the yard, together with the fawn who raced around in the long grass. I was watching her run crazy loops when all of a sudden there were two fawns, both racing around, up and down the hill. Hilarious.

I wasn’t able to capture them both, but here’s a glimpse of one of them – a speck of fawn at speed.

The sound in the background in Noola chewing cardboard. Still.

When I lived in the city my connection to the weather and the seasons was very limited, the markers of change broad and unsubtle. Rain. Snow. Hot and sweaty. The day the leaves arrive on the trees.

Here, I look out the window and the grass looks 2 inches taller than yesterday, but has that sweet smell; the clover is blooming.

The peonies are here, gorgeous and brazen, then all of a sudden over, knocked out by the rain we wanted so badly.

The peas need to be picked daily… but not for long, and here’s the first strawberry. It tastes so good, shared between friends. Fruity communion.

Nature’s changing is fierce and constant. There’s an intensity not unlike riding the subway at rush hour, and it is tempting to turn the abundance and ferociousness of all this growth and plenty into another “should”, another chore, another reason to complain.

I hope I won’t do that and ignore the potential lesson — that life is plentiful and messy and overwhelmingly beautiful. And that just as we grieve the passing of one life, or season, or botched crop, another bursts open ahead.

“Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

— Alice Walker (The Color Purple)