May Days

Perhaps encouraged by the drenching rains this month, Vineyard woods and meadows are blanketed with wildflowers of every description. Bright yellow buttercups and dandelions, white starflowers and fragrant wild lilies of the valley dance along roadsides. Trailing arbutus adorns rutted old roads, wild strawberry flowers are blooming and soon tiny bluets will be studding the fields.

Larger and showier are pink lady’s slippers. Though housing developments have destroyed much of their Island habitat, the fortunate woods-walker may still happen upon one of these wild orchids in some shady place.

Except for lilies of the valley and trailing arbutus, the shy wildflowers of spring have little or no fragrance. But they serve as a prelude of what’s to come: sweeps of of white and yellow daisies, dark orange daylilies, sticky-sweet pink and white swamp azalea.

And May’s flowerets, of course, are just the right size to gather for dollhouse bouquets.