Here's to our colorful May flowers

Pristine rose / The beauty of our May flowers

It's the first week of May and our backyard garden has started to bloom. Lots of colors -- orange, white, pink, red, purple.

Mr. Lincoln red rose

Looking back, the April showers we enjoyed here in the San Francisco Bay Area, indeed, brought an abundance of May flowers to our garden. Our Queen Elizabeth, First Prize and Pristine roses are blooming very nicely. The same for our Mr. Lincoln, white, orange and rainbow-colored roses. Just the other day, I witnessed our first All That Jazz bloom of the season  -- a lovely shade of red.

And, let's not forget that this is the time of the year our purple irises are blooming, too.

For most of us, flowers are an important part of our every-day lives. They have the ability to make us happy and cheerful. And, we offer our friends and loved ones flowers as a means of showing our sympathy.

Different types of flowers can express different kinds of feelings and emotions, from birthdays to graduations to weddings to funerals.

Queen Elizabeth roses

One thing's for sure: May flowers are a wonderful sight to behold -- and, I would would like to share with you a few of our May roses, which I photographed during the first few days of May.

Finally, let me leave you with this thought about flowers that's just as meaningful now in the 21st century as it was when it was written near the end of the 18th century:

"'Tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes!"

-- William Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring"

From Lyrical Ballads (1798)

The pleasure of our gardens, part 4

If spring is nature's way of saying "Let's Party!" as comedian Robin Williams once suggested, then, indeed, let's break out the Champagne, pop the corks and celebrate.

As May unfolds, our rose bushes have adapted nicely to the ample sunshine and warmer temperatures that arrived this week after a couple of unseasonably late April showers. Collectively, they have given rise to many beautifully hued and magnificent blooms.

Within the past week, our Pristine, Queen Elizabeth, Mr. Lincoln and orange rose bushes, all which reside in our back yard and receive a southern exposure to the sun, have bloomed for the first time this season. Meanwhile, our First Prize rose bush, which debuted earliest of our 10 rose bushes and is also a southerner, continues to shows wonderful color and maturity.

However, as I write this post, it's our white rose bush, which faces west towards the Bay, that has bubbled over with delightful enthusiasm. Gazing down from our patio deck, I easily counted a dozen blooms whose petals have opened with much aplomb, and at least another dozen that will join in the celebration any day now.

Elsewhere, in our front yard, new calla lilies have opened next to our porch; the fuchsia are thriving, and the May Day weekend brought the return of our first rhododendron blooms (which I'll write more about in the near future).

Although April showers sometimes dampen our spirit, by May we can most appreciate the good things it's enabled for our future.

Let's celebrate!