I'm never quite content with brilliant orange poppies and light lavender lilacs but each spring they burst into bloom together with their odd color scheme.
Both are gifts from favorite women who were buddies as little girls through high school.  Both ended up living in Lewellen as married women.  One was my mother and the other an art buddy - Alice Bailey.  
My mother loved the country and wild things - the poppies are from her.  Their long spindly stems sway with the slightest breeze turning their spray of color in interesting shapes.
Alice Bailey was a lover of the genteel - beautiful costumes, classic paintings and formal settings - the double lavender lilac was a gift from her.  Alice had an walled-in English garden with a little grass, walking paths and bountiful flower beds.  Many of my paintings are from photos taken in her garden.
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With Covid 19 and social distancing, birding has risen to the top of my to-do list.  We participated in the May e-bird count and spotted thirty-five species at our bird feeder and around the place during a couple of days of watching.  Notably absent were flickers this year.  We do have red-bellied, downy, hairy and red-headed woodpeckers however.  I had been finding chunks of wood on my walking path and found the newly hollowed out hole for one woodpecker.  Unable to identify the bird sitting inside I resorted to the Cornell ebird site and listened to woodpecker calls, making it very clear it was a red-bellied woodpecker.