The first buttercup of the year opened its delicate petals this week, promising a summer of sunshine and sweet wild flowers.

When I was a child, my mom used to say that if someone held a buttercup under your chin, that meant you liked butter.

I’m not so sure that’s true, but it’s a fun memory to have.

Also in the backyard are many, many wild strawberry blossoms, some with tiny, green berries already on them. Although it takes a ton of these tiny berries to make a strawberry pie, no cultivated strawberries anywhere can match the flavor.

Again, when we were children, we would scour the field to find as many tiny berries as possible, and our mom would make that one, very special pie.

I don’t have the patience now to spend hours and hours looking for and picking these little berries, but soon the local strawberry farmer will open up his stand and I’ll be there to buy enough to not only make a strawberry pie, but also a strawberry shortcake using sweetened biscuit batter, and strawberry jam. Maybe I’ll also combine some of these berries with rhubarb to make either or both a jam and a pie.

As spring slowly turns into summer, everything is alive.

The wild yellow and red hawkweed with its very sweet scent is beginning to appear, just as the last of the lilacs have started to rest for another year.

Most of the garden is in, and some of the early lettuces, radish and spinach are beginning to produce enough for a daily salad.

Goslings have hatched from their mother, Dufey, and father, Seb, and just this week we bought a dozen week-old Khaki Campbell ducklings to join Millie, the only surviving adult duck after an attack from a vicious raccoon.

She seems a bit puzzled by all these little quackers, but she continues to give us an egg a day, and allows the ducklings to follow her.

Their coop has been super sealed so hopefully no more night attacks will occur.

Two of my other female geese are intensely sitting on their egg-filled nests, so I think we’ll have a few more goslings this year.

Such a wonderful season. The fresh green tree leaves are beginning to take on their deeper summer colors, and the grass is growing at a speed we can’t keep up with.

But we wait all winter during those cold, windy days for just this time. The Summer Solstice occurs on Father’s Day, June 21 this year. The daylight hours will be the longest of the year, then slowly, first a minute or two a day, then even more as summer progresses, the sun will set a bit earlier.

But we should not think of that right now. For today and the next few weeks, we should get outside and work in our gardens, tend to our animals, get together with friends and family for cookouts, head to a lake beach or visit the ocean.

Summer is short in Maine, so we should make good use of our outdoor time. We all know that wintry days will be here all too soon, and all the joys and challenges of that season will come with it.

So, for now, I hope to enjoy these wonderful, long days and soak in everything the outdoors has to offer.

Eileen M. Adams may be reached at petsplants@midmaine.com