The May Poem
Bluebells, storms, sitting out, GREEN
Hello! It is the last day of May and time for our May Poem. All month long I have been asking you for your observations of the changing seasons, and now it is time to string them all together to make up a picture of this beautiful, beautiful month.
Sadly we have no illustration from our brilliant Sarah Dowling this month but she will be back with us next month.
Let’s go!
Into the woods again and again before the canopy closes over and the bluebells disappear. Then home for asparagus feasts
Boxing hares
My horse loves the cow parsley, and grabs some as we go by, and then looks like Ermintrude the cow
Stranded on the motorway before dawn became a thing of beauty with the magnificent birdsong
Apple blossom scattered by the easterly wind joining the daisies and dandelions across the lawn
Young tomato plants added to a cucumber and sweet peppers in the greenhouse
Goldfinches flitting from tree to tree! Swallows in the barn!
My lawn is suddenly more daisy than grass
The wisteria climbing and sprouting around the house
Filling the feeders with grape jelly and sugar water for the orioles and hummingbirds
Woken by a friendly woodpigeon’s coos
Garden furniture out of storage
A fully leafed out acid green beech hedge
A swan on a nest in the reeds
Dandelion clocks in the field - like a white sea of bobbly, misty, fuzzy pompoms
Wild garlic and cheese scones and wild garlic pesto
Two Sandhill Cranes have made themselves at home right out our nook window area this week. They are feeling so very comfortable that they took to mating this morning as we had our breakfast
No Mow May here and instead of perfectly cut grass I have dandelions, daisies and violets
One lonely asparagus spear in my garden
Green green green in a thousand shades
May blossom in full throttle everywhere
Returned from a few days away to find the garden properly burst into lush green
Blackbirds with beaks full of worms
The shapes of the seedlings’ tiny leaves developing
Sitting as the evenings draw out watching the bats flutter around in crazy zigzags
The dawn chorus as the light creeps through the window at 5am
The very first sweet pea blossom, deep purple along the garden fence
Smelling the roses as I walk down the streets
The first thick green beautiful spear of asparagus reaching skyward
The swifts arrived on Beltane itself
Asparagus, housemartins, swallows, violets and trilliums
The first elderflower. And swallows flying over the fields
A field full of dandelion clocks
The Cornish hedgerows are stunning with white, yellow, pink, purple
A wild turkey meandering across the lawn, heading into the woods, in search of the hens who passed through earlier
The cow parsley is out in force, but slowly giving way to elderflower
Jack-in-the-pulpit, cuckoo flower, alexanders, wild strawberries and cascades of white chokecherry and honeysuckle along the woodland paths
The heady scent of green and growing things
Munching through the first of my homegrown rocket
A bank holiday birthday bluebell woodland walk, and home for fizz and an asparagus tea
Still light in the sky at 9.20pm!
An exaltation of skylarks
Afternoons are warm enough to enjoy a scoop of ice cream, sitting on a bench watching the beachgoers
Extraordinary, almost prehistoric herons, swooping over the loch to catch food for the alien-looking chicks in their big messy nests
My first rose in the garden
Lily of the valley are perfuming the springtime air
The sky is blue and I can hear the turtle dove cooing from the top of the walnut tree
Rapeseed fading, poppies appearing
Calves joining the lambs in the fields and the cotton grass on the moor
Layer upon layer of white frothiness - wild garlic to cow parsley to horse chestnut blooms
Mourning my tulips
A chilly north wind while waiting in the queue at the polling station
Red flax and poppies in our tiny scrap of front garden. I haven’t sown them, just stopped mowing and they’ve appeared as if by magic
Two speckled wood butterflies feeding on the woodruff
Celebrating the remarkable Sir David Attenborough and his 100 years on planet earth
Damp weather bringing the snails out. The dog and I had to pick our route through them carefully on the footpath
The May day fair: Jack in the green, maypole dancing and welly wanging. I even won a bubble blower on the tombola...
The beautiful melody of the blackbird’s song
Spent an afternoon depositing trugs full of beautiful, worm filled compost on all the vegetable beds, a little robin shadowing my every move. Then a cup of tea sitting on the wall with the sun on my back and the sound of a lawnmower and the smell of my neighbour’s barbeque
Out on my horse today, I heard my first cuckoo of the year
Dark stormy skies, sunny blue skies, a vivid rainbow bridging between them
The golden glow of buttercups catching the sun
Drizzle, bluebells, primroses and a roe deer
One roll of thunder, immediate explosion of lightning, five minutes of drenching rain, and then blue skies
The farmer puts his sheep and lambs in the field
Blowsy crimson peonies hanging on through the wind and rain
Umbrellas lifted up and inside out
A week of fresh asparagus and rhubarb
Waking up to a blizzard outside my bedroom window
The rose by my back door is covered in fat pink buds
Washing out, washing in and washing out again
The Cottonwood trees are releasing their seed. Blowing and gathering like snow
Tiny birds darting into nest boxes with beakfuls of food
Going outside in the evening and the air feeling warmer than inside
Driving home after 9.30pm in a beautiful twilight, stars coming out in a darkening violet sky
The trees at their fullest. So much green and texture
A roundabout full of waving dog daisies with the odd splash of scarlet from a poppy
The hedgerows a lovely jumble of vibrant bluebells, pink campions and the froth of cow parsley
Munching cows and frolicking lambs
A lovely big frog - our first - has chosen its home in our pond
Bravely planted out my first courgette plant. All in a week, from fears of frost, to heat exhaustion
Tunnels of lime green loveliness
The first pink blooms of roses, fishermen on the river in the early morning
The wild strawberries are ripe and ready to pick
Chip shop chips eaten in the garden last night
The joy of that shrill cry and acrobatic display of prowess high above a busy Bromley road - the swifts have made it back from Africa
First t-shirt dog walk of the year
No swifts here in Michigan, but purple martins checking out gourd houses I’ve hung for them this week
Watching baby wrens fledge from their nest in the shed. So tiny
Sitting outside at a cafe, next to a little river, having coffee with friends, listening to birds and feeling enveloped in gorgeous green
First garden G&T of the year
Parking under a weeping willow for shade and hearing its long sweeping finger tips grazing the roof of the car as they danced in the warm breeze
Sage, roses, jasmine, iris, Sweet William, elder, geranium, strawberries, peas, clematis, salvias, osteospermum and pansies
The hummingbirds returned
The heatwave has brought me into the garden to sleep in a sleeping bag under the stars the last couple of nights
Peas are four inches high in the garden but there is still snow up in the mountains
The heady scent of elderflower in the air
That’s it for May! Thank you for all your beautiful and poetic contributions and let’s do it all in - I can’t believe it… - JUNE!
I love how these poems archive each month into memory, if only temporarily.
Perfectly said!