WORDS

 my weekly posting of a poem, a quote and a passage from literature.

MAY-FLOWER

Pink, small and punctual.

Aromatic, low,

Covert in April,

Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,

Known by the knoll,

Next to the robin

In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,

Bedecked with thee,

Nature forswears 

Antiquity.

~Emily Dickinson

(Facts About Mayflowers- Scroll down below)

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up tomorrow."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"I noticed plenty of mallard and tufted duck in the flighting ponds but saw no nests. Blue shiny beetles again caught my eye along the bank, and spiders darted in and out of the reeds. There were water boatman at the water's edge, something I had not noticed before, and many more young trout than ever before. The cattle-drink and newly-made 'island' were full of tiny silvery fish, swaying this way and that as if they were being pulled by the same invisible string. They leapt out of the water every so often; perhaps a predator was amongst them.

~from Janet Marsh's Nature Diary

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Facts about Mayflowers

   The Mayflower is a belly plant, i.e, one must lie on one's stomach to catch a legitimate moment of putting eye and nose to the beauty and perfume.

• The scarcely shrubby Mayflower is a tough, slightly woody, more or less rough-hairy plant with light brown, creeping stems and alternate, olive-green leaves.
• The scientific name, Epigaea repens, coined by Linnaeus in 1753 from Greek and Latin, literally means creeping (or running) on the earth.
• Mayflower typically grows in sandy or rocky, acid soils in woods and clearings, often on hillsides and banks, including road banks, especially under oaks and pines or hemlocks with such other ericads as mountain-laurel.
• Other common names of Mayflower are: Gravel plant, shadflower, ground laurel, mountain pink, winter pink.
• Mayflower plant leaves are alternate, evergreen, leathery, Ovate or oblong, with entire margin and a rounded or heart-shaped base.
• The Mayflower has a small fleshy fruit, 5-chambered, many-seeded capsule that splits open at maturity. Ants then disperse the seeds.
• Mayflower blomms from March to May.
• The Mayflower leaves contain ericoline and ursolic acid along with arbutin, which is a urinary antiseptic.
• Unfortunately, since 1925 Mayflowers have been on the endangered list.