The Opening Up of Summer

I've been standing  at the living room window for ten minutes catching up with the number of birds around the front lawn.  Yesterday I filled the cement bird bath and immediately any number of birds are drinking from it; no one appears to need a bath as yet though.  It seems not long ago I was lamenting the frozen, barren earth and now, like a giant earthly switch flipped, it has all changed.  The leaves have opened, the grass has sprung up as green as ever, and the birds, bees and butterflies are all winging their way through the air over the very spots that had been dead to the world a very short while ago.  How does it all do that?
Our neighbour, the farmer, is spending long hours on his plow these days; I catch glimpses of him roaming up and down the field to the right of us. Sometimes I can hear the whine of one machine or another.  He must at the end of the day look at the miles of perfectly straight lines and feel great satisfaction.  It makes me think about how the earth gets planted and then replanted over and over and still manages to grow more.  I'm in awe of that. 
I've had this Carlyle quote in my notebook for a few years; this year it finally seems very appropriate.

Long stormy spring-time

wet, contentious April,

winter chilling the lap of very May,

but at length the season of summer does come.

                                 Thomas Carlyle