May here was a weather mixing bowl of sun, fog, rain, and even snow flurries, but mostly it was a month of glorious sun. Nonetheless, we didn’t see many leaves until near the end of the month.
Along the shore, some fishing vessels were coming back to the water from their winter vacations “on the hard,” while others were getting reconfigured from scalloping to lobstering and loading their traps. Here we see vessels from neighboring Blue Hill, our own Naskeag Harbor, and Stonington across Penobscot Bay.
While the covid-19 virus kept many human visitors away, we had plenty of returning visitors from other members of the animal kingdom. As for the feathered ones, we’re monitoring a returning pair of ospreys, which appear ready to hatch one or more eggs in June; tiny spring warblers, including the embarrassingly named yellow-rumped warblers, found their way back. They were among many winged returnees, including flocks of aggressive grackles that drove our recently-awakened painted turtles crazy.
Of course, other residents awoke from their winter’s seclusions and hibernations, including our groundhogs, muskrats, and chipmunks.
In the woods and marsh ponds, wild plants grew exponentially: skunk cabbage at the beginning of the month consisted of purple spathes and leaves trying to emerge; at the end of the month, they were in almost full leaf. arrow arum and water lily pads were out by the end of the month, and ferns had progressed from being entombed to fiddleheads.
Of course, May also is about blossoming flowers. In terms of trees, among our most spectacular are flowering crabapple, apple, plum, shadblow and red maple.
On the ground, lupine pods start to arise and bejewel themselves in May; dandelions blow their horns everywhere, quince helps early pollinators, and tulips appear initially as spears.
The two most famous days in May evoke differing senses: Mother’s Day love is celebrated with a banner on Brooklin’s Naskeag Road and Memorial Day is celebrated with the American Flag on veterans’ graves in our Town’s cemetery.
Finally, we leave you with May’s spectacular moon. The full May moon is known as the Flower Moon, because it arrives with the flowers. Just before it became full, it appeared during the day over our budding trees. The full May moon arose red, seemingly angry, and distorted in our atmosphere; it then transformed into platinum as it ascended into space.
(Brooklin, Maine. All images here were taken in Down East Maine during May 2020.)