The first of May. Different friends are honoring the occasion in different ways. Some of my friends have been helping to organize New York City’s biggest rent strike in a century, or rallying in support of striking essential workers. After all, May 1 is International Workers Day precisely because Americans workers rallied together on this day in 1886. Other more earth-centered friends have been honoring the Beltane holiday.

(I should emphasize that my earth-centered friends overlap substantially with my justice-seeking friends. Someday I’d like to explore whether their two holidays coincide accidentally or intentionally.)

It’s a grey, rainy, cold May Day in Maine, so while I’m honoring the essential workers’ strike today, I’ve decided to take a more earth-centered approach, sharing some of the flowers I’ve been photographing in Mom’s yard since early April.

Down by the lake across the street, tiny bluets, barely blue at the tips of their petals, have practically taken over in both grassy and mossy areas.

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Plus whatever this shy, subtle little thing is in the swampiest part of the field.

One warm afternoon mid-April, after a walk down by the pond, we put the picnic table back in its place, and I spent the afternoon finishing the big reorganization of my memoir manuscript.

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Along the far side of the lake on another day, I found a few things beginning to come up that I thought I should know the names of.

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I even found some gently unfurling fiddleheads over near my aunt’s house.

I wish I still had the kind of camera that could better capture the budding of the trees at the tips of their slender branches, and the baby leaves unfurling.

I had much better luck with capturing pussy willows. I had no idea that they bloomed, but you can clearly see the stamens of little flowers in one of these photos.

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