May

We moved into our first home in Ipswich, Massachusetts during the month of May. It was lilac season and an immense lilac bush grew outside our kitchen window. And so began my love affair with lilacs.

The Arnold Arboretum in Boston each May gives visitors an opportunity to indulge their lilac passion. I recall with fondness my visits. Many will miss the annual Lilac Sunday, May 10. From the Arboretum’s website:

The lilacs will bloom as usual over the course of several weeks (typically late April through mid-to-late May). We invite you to visit during these weeks of peak lilac bloom, but request that you practice social distancing from one another and respect our plants. If the landscape appears to be too crowded for safe visitation, please return another time.

Arnold Arboretum website, Bob Mayer photos

"April is promises and tentative beginnings, but May is achievement. May is dawn shimmering with dew and sunrise on lawn and meadow, dancing with young leaves in every woodland, jubilant with birdsong in every treetop. May is dogtooth violets beside brimming brooks, the first buttercups beyond the pasture fences, purple violets everywhere. May is apple blossoms and lilacs, and if any other month can surpass that combination we have yet to learn its name…May is altogether wonderful, once it comes.

—Hal Borland in "Twelve Moons of the Year"
May 1962