Near the beginning of every most months, you can find us checking in with what’s coming up on the calendar, both literally and figuratively.  You can find our archive of previous welcomes here, including May 2017, May 2015, and May 2014.

Ahhh, May! I’m happy you’re here, and you’re you.

Even if you did surprise us with a huge snowstorm midway through the month last year… not holding a grudge or anything.

Looking Forward

This year we’re embracing May’s awkward spot. Sure it’s a lovely spring month, but everyone really just wants to flip that calendar to June and the start of summer vacation. As such, we’re making travel one of our May themes on the blog. We had a lot of fun planning April’s calendar around Earth Month, and we’re excited to plan a series of travel-related posts for May. Of course, you can always check out our archive of past travel posts by clicking the “travel” menu right at the top of the page.

If you missed our series of Earth Month posts, here’s a little recap. We shared some of our favorite nature reads for both adults and kids. Sarah did some nature-related Meditative Mondays. We suggested a simple fix to keep you wearing your favorite shoes longer. I talked about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and Sarah gave you a list of 34 alternatives to disposable plastics.

Mother’s Day is coming up. Admittedly I’m wishy-washy on holidays like this. I understand the sentiment, but I don’t like the burden of the expectations of another holiday. Last year we biked in Rocky Mountain National Park, and created such awesome memories. If the weather cooperates, we’re hoping to do the same thing again this year. fingers crossed!

What We’re Eating

In addition to the travel posts. May is the last spring month with potatoes as our ingredient of the season. We have a few more dishes that we’re excited to share. We may even get crazy and have a cross-country potato salad competition with electronic voting – keep your eyes on our Instastories! Do you have a favorite recipe?

I think we’ve officially put the raclette machine away for the year, although, given the aforementioned May snowstorm, nothing is for certain.

Every year I try to do a bit more foraging with the boys. After the success of our dandelion greens salad, I’m really excited to add more dandelion greens to our dishes. Maybe a dandelion pesto over potato gnocchi? Well, since I’ve said it out loud, #notakebacks.

Observing Nature

This past weekend I participated in the iNaturalist City Challenge. It was a chance for citizen scientists to document the wildlife diversity in their city. If you haven’t used iNaturalist yet, check out our post about the site and why we think it’s a great resource for anyone and everyone interested in wildlife observation.

Spring and summer are great seasons for observing Mother Nature’s cycles. It’s been four years since we wrote about phenology, but that post is as relevant as ever, and it’s never too late to start contributing your observations to the growing bank of data on iNaturalist (or any other citizen science project).

If you haven’t done so yet, put out your hummingbird feeder. The little guys have arrived, and putting out a feeder is a great way to invite them into your yard for observation.