Goodbye The Month of May.

The month of may has come and gone so fast, with it are many things too. Yet the thirty one days remains a mystery to many of us who go through countless events and occasions that takes place during this period. There is an African story about this month that is "affectionately-nostalgic" that used to cap this wonderful month. It's quite a long one, Read it here: African Story about May. As as we bade it farewell, I would love to share quite some normal but amazing facts about this month.

Apart from it being one of the cutest Julian or Gregorian months of the year, quite a large number of people celebrate their birthdays during this month.
May is a month of autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and spring in the Northern Hemisphere (summer in Europe). Therefore May in the Southern Hemisphere is the seasonal equivalent of November in the Northern Hemisphere and vice versa.
Factually, No other month begins or ends on the same day of the week as May in any year. This month is the only month to have these two properties. However, May does share starting and ending days with various months of both previous and following years: every year, May starts and ends on the same day of the week as January of the following year.

It is the third and last month of the season of spring.

The birthstone of May, the emerald, symbolizes success and love. 

May in the Northern Hemisphere is similar to November in the Southern Hemisphere.

May was once considered a bad luck month to get married. There is a poem that says "Marry in May and you'll rue the day". 

In Old English May is called the "month of three milkings" referring to a time when the cows could be milked three times a day. :-D 

The month of May is devoted to the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church.

The last week of May is Library and Information Week.

Now you Know!

One famous poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89), said this about the Month of May, enjoy!

MAY is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—
Candlemas, Lady Day;	5
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?
Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?	10
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—	15
Growth in every thing—
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested	20
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing	25
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind	30
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.
Well but there was more than this:
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say	35
To offering Mary May.
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry	40
And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—
This ecstasy all through mothering earth	45
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.

Happy end of May Ya'll!

Loughran.