At last came the golden month of the wild folk-- honey-sweet May, when the birds come back, and the flowers come out, and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs of the dawning year.

Samuel Scoville
Wild Folk

That first cup is the sweetest

Napoleon Bonaparte died on this day in 1821 on St Helena, where he was exiled after Waterloo

Our Waterloo Exhibition displays this Legion d'Honneur medal, picked up on the field of battle

Glorious copper beech

Birdsong

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date

Shakespeare
Sonnet 18

Evening walk with Dad

Beautiful May hawthorn

Unusual nest

Wolfhound walk

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
May-Flower

The Le Roy et Fils zodiac clock in the Drawing Room at Lissadell. It has the sweetest chime.

Dinner time

Evening walk

In case anybody needs some last minute tips on how to dress for Ladies' Day at Punchestown today, I wrote a short piece on the #history of festival fashion at the Co. Kildare racecourse:
emmalyons.ie/were-not-here-…

#HorseRacing #fashionhistory

Yes, I will spend the livelong day
With Nature in this month of May;
And sit beneath the trees, and share
My bread with birds whose homes are there
While birds do sing with all their might
As though they felt the earth in flight

W. H. Davies

Flowers in the rain

May day

Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air.

#Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Lost, 4.3