Spring Things - A Month of Mays

Today, on the first day of June, I look back on a month of May flowers. 

May is a month where we go from no leaves on the trees to lush growth.  We go from daffodils, through tulips, lilacs, and through so many other flowers.  There is no other month like it during the year.

At the beginning of the month, it was the time of daffodils and tulips.

The month started with daffodils blooming.

Then, a tree whose identity I am not sure about - it is a cherry. perhaps a pin cherry or a black cherry.  But, on May 3 when I took this picture, its blossoms smelled as sweet as honey.

In my neighborhood, the crabapple trees were out by May 10.

White crabapples blooming on May 11.

By May 12, an amazing thing had happened.  The magnolias had come out in early April, and were cut down by a late hard freeze.  The trees sat and sulked.

May 12

And then, suddenly, they started to bloom again, like this one by the Broome County courthouse in downtown Binghamton.  And, for days after, they threw out blooms, sporatically.  You can not keep Nature down.

Creeping phlox at a Newark Valley, NY bed and breakfast May 13, taken by my guest photographer. 

Tulips in my front yard, mid month.

I've published so many pictures of dogwoods, I don't dare post another.  So here, instead, is a columbine from May 16, on the West side of Binghamton.  This purple is my favorite color of flower.

And now, at month's end?  The spireas are fading out.  The lilacs are done.  Now it is the time of azaleas and rhodedendrons.

Azalea, Westover, near Johnson City, New York 5-29

May, alas, is over.  The month of dreams fade away, and the haze of summer begins.

How was May for you?