April Showers Bring May Flowers, or is it Mayflowers?

I think today's title has a much better ring to it than my last post, the one about worms.

"April showers bring May flowers" is the saying I started with for both post titles. According to Wikipedia, that saying -- or a version of it -- goes back to the 14th century, something I'd never have known if it weren't for Google (see link here).

But for today's title, I had to stop to think whether I wanted May and flowers to be two words or one.

"May flowers" means, to me at least, flowers that we associate with the month of May.

The reason I was conflicted is that I always think of mayflowers as one word. It is the common name for the trailing arbutus (or Epigaea repens), a plant that is found in wooded areas in Atlantic Canada and is the official floral emblem of my province of Nova Scotia.

For years my father picked a huge bunch of mayflowers each spring. I remember them at home when I was growing up.

After I was grown, with a family of my own and my parents divorced, my dad brought me a bouquet of them every year for my birthday in early May. The delicate pink or white blossoms lasted well in a vase of water for a couple of weeks, their scent so pleasing anytime I passed near them.

My dad has been gone for almost seven years, and before that was in a nursing home for eight years. It's been over fifteen years since I held real Mayflowers in my hands and inhaled their sweet smell.

But I always associate the word and the flower with him.

Why don't I pick my own mayflowers, you ask?

It's not because picking them is illegal, because it's not. That's a common myth here but they are not an endangered plant. That's despite the fact that picking them inevitably results in tearing them up by the roots. They are a woody plant and do not break off nicely when picked. I might pick one but I wouldn't pull up a whole bunch of them because that wipes out that patch pretty much forever. And eventually maybe they would be endangered. And although you'd think plants that come out by the roots could be transplanted to one's own garden, alas, they are a very picky plant that likes certain conditions and only those conditions and inevitably die if planted anywhere else.

It's a moot point anyhow because, like most people, I don't know where to find them. My dad had a couple of secret spots, one of which was in the large wooded area that stretched for miles behind the garage where he worked as a mechanic. He used to hunt for them during his lunch hour. I think he was likely trespassing, but it was equally likely he hadn't seen it that way. He was a walker of the woods, any woods, and didn't think about property rights, especially if the property belonged to the government.

Which, if you think about it, isn't a bad interpretation of property rights on government land. The government is basically you and I and people everywhere.

Anyhow, here is a picture of mayflowers. I wish I could waft their perfume through the internet to you.

Each blossom is more or less the size of an adult person's thumbnail.