It's May, and, of course, time for some of the month's namesake blossoms. The beginnings of the blooms working their way up the bottom of the flower column in the top image belong to the Canada Mayflower, an exceedingly common little charmer whose leaves green the forest floor in advance of the main floral event. You have to get low to the ground to spot the attractive blossoms of Maianthemum canadense, as the plant is now known to botanical scientists, but that's always worth the effort. The flowers of another signature May plant, the Dogwood, shown below, require a neck-craning movement in the opposite direction: a looking-up rather than a looking-down. This motion also repays the effort, and in my case, given how creaky Lyme disease and the arthritis it triggered left my joints a year or so ago, the fact that I can now bend, stretch, twist, and turn in all the required directions to document the May flowers is cause for flower-engendered great joy. Thank you antibiotics and various physical therapists.