Ne'er cast a clout till May be out

There's argument over whether the old saying means to wait until the end of May the month before you start leaving the house without a jacket, or until the Hawthorn or May blossom is out.  I think the latter, and it's out with a vengeance: I took this photograph on Sunday and the may was definitely in flower but by yesterday, after two days of lots of sunshine, there were hardly any buds left and the whole bush was covered in flower.

I've been taking Tizzy up to the dog walking field and it's covered in dandelion clocks.  I don't know if this is a deliberate policy or the result of cuts, but the bees are loving it - they were browsing among the dandelions and I saw a lot of insects enjoying both the sun and the wildflowers.  Tizzy chases around, seemingly thinking they're put there for her pleasure - she likes to bite them and watch the little seeds fly away.  Although it's barely the middle of May, it was very hot yesterday and she took every chance to sit in the shade.

We met a large labrador, but she's such a coward with anything bigger than her.  She bounded towards it, realised it was bigger than she thought and ran back to sit between my feet.  The dog was friendly enough, and she did get up the courage to run towards him, but barked and high-tailed it back to me again.  She did it several times - I thought that all I needed to exercise her was a large dog at the end of the path, and she'd happily run towards and then away from him for hours.