By Carl Nolte, Contributor May 2, 2026 - San Francisco Chronicle
This is the first weekend in May, everybody’s favorite month. May is full of promises, as an old song said, but it’s also a month when things change. It is an end and a beginning wrapped up in a single month.
The first week of May signals the transition into summer, with longer days and a small shift in the weather. The first touches of summer fog show up in May, along with the westerly wind that dries out the hills and sets the stage for summer.
May is also the month when wildflowers bloom, especially in Marin, where flowers that look like wild orchids show up along the little mountain creeks, flowing briskly as if they were still enthusiastic about the last rains of April.
The last April rains brought a bloom of little flowers, even in the city. I noticed some golden poppies blooming the other day in the middle of a Valencia Street traffic median, like an encore of spring.
As city kids in sunny California, we were always interested in the change of seasons. We disliked a rainy winter, but we liked the winds of March — kite season — and the onset of April when the green grass of Potrero Hill was tallest. We would sometimes scrunch down in the grass to check out the bugs, particularly the sow bugs and burrowing worms.
We also knew which of the plants that grew wild were edible — well, sort of. One of our favorites was fennel, or licorice plant, and another that grew small pods. We avoided a certain weed that the older kids told us caused its victims to wet the bed. It was universally known as “pee plant.” I myself never ate any, so I have survived to tell the tale.
But the state of the hillside grass was the key to our understanding of the cycles of the seasons.
While the adults were busy with the holidays and other important events, we noticed the first shoots of grass in the hills about Thanksgiving.
On one of the few bright days of gray November, one could look up Market Street and notice that Twin Peaks had turned green. And so had the Marin Headlands and the other hills that ring the bay. So for six months green was the color, and March and April were the greenest.
It’s May that brings the change: The grass has run its cycle, grown tall and dropped its seeds for another year. And about the second week of May, the hills turn brown.
I went out to check it on my neighborhood hill on the last morning of April. The change is easy to see: Some of the hillsides are still green, while some are turning brown.
If you look, you can see the tall grass changing and ready to die off. In some places on Bernal Heights and other hills, you can walk between green sections and brown hillsides. It’s like walking between late spring and early summer.
I looked across Noe Valley toward Twin Peaks, still green, but the wind came up. In a week, maybe more, it will be brown, ready for summer.
The brown hills have their own beauty, especially in the foothills and the rolling hills of Marin and Contra Costa counties and on the edges of the Salinas Valley. John Steinbeck liked the color. He said the summer hills looked like the backs of tawny lions.
I always liked May because it is a time of celebration. It’s an ending: Is there anything more ominous than taking a final exam? I still have nightmares about that.
But finals season also includes that great rite of passage, the high school prom, when the young people dress up in tuxedoes and formal gowns as if they were going to a White House ball.
It was a great ritual in my salad days, and maybe yours. It required careful planning for boys and more for the young women: rented tuxes, corsages, beautiful gowns, a night to remember. It was an introduction to what we thought was the real world. We didn’t know how complicated that would be.
But the best of May was graduation season, the end of school, the beginning of everything.
San Francisco knows: May is when the whole town starts to turn
Greg
Quick and Dirty
This is the first weekend in May, everybody’s favorite month. May is full of promises, as an old song said, but it’s also a month when things change. It is an end and a beginning wrapped up in a single month.
The first week of May signals the transition into summer, with longer days and a small shift in the weather. The first touches of summer fog show up in May, along with the westerly wind that dries out the hills and sets the stage for summer.
May is also the month when wildflowers bloom, especially in Marin, where flowers that look like wild orchids show up along the little mountain creeks, flowing briskly as if they were still enthusiastic about the last rains of April.
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The last April rains brought a bloom of little flowers, even in the city. I noticed some golden poppies blooming the other day in the middle of a Valencia Street traffic median, like an encore of spring.
Poppies blooming in a median on Valencia Street are one of the signs of spring in San Francisco.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
As city kids in sunny California, we were always interested in the change of seasons. We disliked a rainy winter, but we liked the winds of March — kite season — and the onset of April when the green grass of Potrero Hill was tallest. We would sometimes scrunch down in the grass to check out the bugs, particularly the sow bugs and burrowing worms.
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We also knew which of the plants that grew wild were edible — well, sort of. One of our favorites was fennel, or licorice plant, and another that grew small pods. We avoided a certain weed that the older kids told us caused its victims to wet the bed. It was universally known as “pee plant.” I myself never ate any, so I have survived to tell the tale.
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Article continues below this ad
But the state of the hillside grass was the key to our understanding of the cycles of the seasons.
While the adults were busy with the holidays and other important events, we noticed the first shoots of grass in the hills about Thanksgiving.
Twin Peaks’ green grass will soon turn brown, signaling the shift from spring to summer.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
On one of the few bright days of gray November, one could look up Market Street and notice that Twin Peaks had turned green. And so had the Marin Headlands and the other hills that ring the bay. So for six months green was the color, and March and April were the greenest.
It’s May that brings the change: The grass has run its cycle, grown tall and dropped its seeds for another year. And about the second week of May, the hills turn brown.
I went out to check it on my neighborhood hill on the last morning of April. The change is easy to see: Some of the hillsides are still green, while some are turning brown.
If you look, you can see the tall grass changing and ready to die off. In some places on Bernal Heights and other hills, you can walk between green sections and brown hillsides. It’s like walking between late spring and early summer.
I looked across Noe Valley toward Twin Peaks, still green, but the wind came up. In a week, maybe more, it will be brown, ready for summer.
Visiting San Francisco’s Bernal Heights this time of year is like traveling between spring and summer, with hillsides a mixture of green and brown.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
The brown hills have their own beauty, especially in the foothills and the rolling hills of Marin and Contra Costa counties and on the edges of the Salinas Valley. John Steinbeck liked the color. He said the summer hills looked like the backs of tawny lions.
I always liked May because it is a time of celebration. It’s an ending: Is there anything more ominous than taking a final exam? I still have nightmares about that.
But finals season also includes that great rite of passage, the high school prom, when the young people dress up in tuxedoes and formal gowns as if they were going to a White House ball.
It was a great ritual in my salad days, and maybe yours. It required careful planning for boys and more for the young women: rented tuxes, corsages, beautiful gowns, a night to remember. It was an introduction to what we thought was the real world. We didn’t know how complicated that would be.
But the best of May was graduation season, the end of school, the beginning of everything.
I’ve been to lots of graduations, both as a reporter and a participant. I loved it all: the pageantry, the caps and gowns, the serious music, the faculty looking solemn, the families looking proud and anxious, the long walk across the stage to receive a diploma from the president of the school.
Much of the grass has grown tall and turned brown in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights after running its cycle.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
I was there one year on graduation day at the California Maritime Academy. At the end, the cadets all threw their white hats in the air, like a volcanic eruption of hats. I went to one graduation at the University of San Francisco where friends and family got to one graduate after the ceremony and threw him up in the air, his mortarboard and gown flying.
The first college graduation of the year was scheduled for Saturday, the second day of May, at the maritime academy’s campus in Vallejo. The school has been reorganized and now is called the Cal Poly Maritime Academy under the aegis of the big school in San Luis Obispo. It’s the last commencement where the diplomas carry the old name. Next year it will all be Cal Poly.
Commencement is a great way to end a college career, but on May 8, about 300 cadets will sail aboard the Golden Bear, the school’s training ship, for a 65-day voyage. It’s a way to begin a college semester — sailing out the Golden Gate with the whole world just over the horizon.
There’s lots more to come in May: some good weather with any luck, May celebrations, spring parties, Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day. At the end of the month, Memorial Day, which mixes a bit of sadness and remembrance with the first day of summer. Poet T.S. Eliot said April is the cruelest month, and that may be so. But May is full of promises.
May 2, 2026