Is the external SD card mounted after widgets are launched?

I played with widgets for the first time, adding a clock, power control, some pictures, and the music widgets to the desktop.
The pictures and all music are on the external SDHC card.
During startup/reboot a popup message appears on the desktop, "problem loading widget".
I think it is complaining about either the music player or the photos (or both?). The message appears in the exact space that the music widget should appear. But, the picture frames also appear at the same time without pictures (just a pair of vertical lines touching each other.)
After about 10 to 20 seconds the music widget appears and the photos appear in their frames.
It has the appearance that the external SD card is mounted after the widgets start running, and the widgets are fortunately smart enough to keep looking for their files until they appear.

Is this a bug or a just-how-Android-works situation?
Can mounting the external SDcard occur earlier in the bootup -- before the desktop/background/workspace are initialized?