This post is part of Roxana Villa's May Flower blog project. Visit her Illuminated Blog for a full list of participants and links to their articles.

I'm going to take you for a little walk in the gardens I frequent in the West End. Summer arrived here early, after a very long spring that began sometime in December. Spring and summer flowers are blooming in succession as well as simultaneously. These photos were actually all taken on April 24th. Vancouver is one big flower party these days!

Cherry blossoms, certainly the symbol of spring, or even early spring if you wish. They are still decorating the city by the hundreds, refusing to leave the party. They want to observe the summer flowers too!

Lilies of the valley are rather rare in these parts, and this is the very first time that I've seen them in such abundance. With their tiny bells they announcer of summer, just like snowdrops announce the end of winter. They remind me of hidden gardens and all things bright and green.

Wild bleeding hearts are perhaps not as impressive as the cultivated and more defined variety, but they are such a romantic reminder of love gone wrong. I imagine their scent to be green and poisonous, although in reality they have very little to offer in the world of scents.

Chocolate lilies are an alpine surprise that is always a little funny to find, with their queer checkered petals shaped like chocolate Easter eggs...

These rhododendrons smelled exotic and tropical, like a giant indolic lily. The yellow rhododendrons in my building's garden are already in full bloom and greet you at the door with a hit of lily-scented cloud...

Star of the show, this dwarf white magnolia is such a beauty, even if not as fragrant and gigantic as the others that were blooming earlier this spring.

This big pink rhododendron was a surprise to me, because the large bell-shaped ones tend to be nearly odourless. This was a complete perfume, and smelled like a dewy orchid. It was simultaneously sappy, resinous and a little pine-like and soapy.

Even my gardenia plant, which always refuses to open its buds, has opened several flowers that were tightly sealing their fragrant secret written on white petals and coiled in a green capsule that only summer knows its access code.

We already have lilacs and peonies blooming, as well as elder flowers. I wonder: what will be left for summer?