One day post-May Day. May Day or “Carrying little bouquets of flowers to the neighbors Day," which no one does anymore.  I’ve written before about making little paper baskets, filling them with early flowers and hanging them on a neighbor’s door knob. It is such fun at age 7 or 8, to be sneaky and kind at the same time. The Victor-area didn’t always have a large variety of flowers in bloom on May 1^st, so we had to make do with daffodils, grape hyacinths and dandelions. Our closest neighbor was an older couple with grown children, so they were always glad to see other children, and they kindly pretended they didn’t notice me leaving the basket and running the quarter-mile back home again.

There are dandelions and violets dotting our lawn now, and soon there’ll be lilies of the valley. If the weather is especially warm, perhaps early peonies around Memorial Day. The gold finches began changing color in April and now we have a whole flock of little yellow birds. When they all fly up at once, they resemble a cloud of butterflies. In May the northeast becomes “Emerald City Green”. Perhaps that is why an emerald is the gem of the month for May ---- everything is greener and more glowing. One might expect to see Dorothy marching along on the yellow brick road, with the scarecrow, tin man and lion. There is also the fresh smell of garden soil being turned over, and lawns being mowed. The general directive for our region is not to plant anything tender until after Memorial Day, but, eager gardeners that we are, we sometimes can’t resist planting earlier. Quite soon, farmers will begin chopping hay. When that aroma drifts into one’s nostrils, it immediately lightens perspective on the day. Forget all those artificial sprays, just figure out how to bottle the scent of freshly-cut alfalfa and clover.

April and May equals Prom Season, as a friend of mine who sews professionally, knows well. She is inundated with orders for sequined, beaded, satin and tulle creations.  It has been 64 years since my last prom, but I remember several of them well.  In our school, there was a Senior Ball in December and the Junior Prom in April or May. But all classes went to all dances, so they were high school events.  Unlike today’s sophisticated hotel venues, the classes responsible decorated the school gym, in whatever theme they chose. One I remember was “Enchanted Island.”  Today, insurance companies would shudder to see high school students perched on ladders, hanging streamers. The proms featured live bands, refreshments, and often there were after-prom parties at someone’s home. There were no limos either; only tired, but cooperative parents to provide transportation until our dates were old enough to drive. Life may have been simpler then, but a prom is a prom, and there is always enough excitement and glamor make them special.  I understand that currently, friends attend proms in groups instead of needing a date.  I think that this is good, for it includes everyone and doesn’t push kids into social situations they’d rather avoid. So not all cultural changes are bad!

Mothers’ Day is just over a week away. This was an occasion for celebration a long time, before it became an “official” day in 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law. Father’s Day is fast-approaching, too, in mid-June.  These are two days in which we can take a closer-than-usual look at our parents, our heritage, and who we are because of both. Parents and offspring have times when they are at odds, and consider each an annoyance.  It is part of parenting and growing up!  But those of us whose parents have passed on, often think wistfully of how we’d like to sit down with them again, asking questions and getting stories.  Louis L’Amour* wrote this:  You never think of your parents as much more than parents.  It isn’t until you are older yourself that you begin to realize they had their hopes, dreams, ambitions and secret thoughts. You sort of take them for granted, and sometimes you are startled to know they were in love a time or two……..You never stop to think about what they were like until it is too late….”

My father died in his early 70s. Since he was 47 when I was born, I barely had time to relate to him as another adult.  Our children were very small and I was focused on them.  My mother lived to be 94, so there was more opportunity, although I’m not sure that I took advantage of that time as well as I might have done. Kerm’s father also died too early, but his mother lived into her 90s.  And we did get to spend more time with her when she stayed with us for a bit.  Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day should give us nudges  to contemplate who our parents really are/were, to be conscious of accumulating stories and memories, keeping them alive.

It seems to be a truism that each generation tends to feel a little superior to the generation just past. Horse and buggy days sound impossible to us now. It seems incredible that when a young man went west, in the 1800s, he would probably never see or hear of his family again.  Letters were slow, expensive and other forms of communication were non-existent. Now, it is technology changing our options so rapidly that many older people feel inept. For those who’ve used technology since babyhood, confusion about it seems absurd. Gaps in understanding continue. But regardless of perceptions, each generation does build on the last generation.  And there is much to learn on both sides.  More listening and less judgement would be wise.

If we are watching, and listening around that second weekend in May, we will also likely see and hear humming birds and rose-breasted grosbeaks. I’m also hoping for an indigo bunting. We haven’t seen one now in several years, and I’m not sure what might attract them back. Maybe no cat??  I always cut oranges and put out grape jelly for orioles too. They do come, but only to rest for a few days, slurp up the jelly, drink the orange juice and leave our avian spa for other,to them,more attractive nesting spots. This is also the season when our less-than-welcome bears can be found drinking out of the humming bird feeder, gobbling the grape jelly, and pulling down bird feeders wherever they go.

Bears are foragers, but we humans can be that also. In the interest of exercise and fun, now is the time to be foraging for wild foods. Back when I had energy and was enthusiastic about Euell Gibbons, who lived not far from us in Pennsylvania, I explored this culinary option. His books, “Stalking the Wild Asparagus”, “Stalking the Wild Herbs”, etc. were such fun. My experiments had mixed results; some pretty good and some quite horrible, as our sons will remind me and anyone else who cares to listen. But the foraging was fun and the harvesting added some texture and different flavors to our daily food. Tiny, hard day lily buds can be prepared like green beans, very young dandelion leaves add multiple vitamins to a salad and violets can be candied for cake decorations, made into jam or tossed fresh into salads. Food-foraging is healthy; gets one out into fresh air and there’s exercise as a bonus.

Along with foraging for possible salad greens, weeds in general are growing apace in my gardens! There is a T-shirt that reads: “Surgeon General’s Warning: Gardening can be dirty, addictive and may lead to OWD --- Obsessive Weeding Disorder!”  Unlike my husband and my brothers, all of whom are/were farmers at heart, there aren’t very many plants that I consider absolute weeds. Most can be used in some way; as food, applied medicinally or arranged in bouquets.  Some, like Joe Pye Weed and jewelweed, while spreading too rapidly, do add beauty to the garden and food for butterflies and hummingbirds. Another person says: “The weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.”** There are some, however, that give me so much grief, that their usefulness is small potatoes compared to their annoying qualities: dock, poke (or Devil’s Walking Stick), cleavers, gout weed and quack grass.  Except for cleavers, they are all deep-rooted and can grow from a tiny fragment of root left behind.  Gout weed, in particular, reaches out and grows horizontally as well as vertically, and may take over the world.  And cleavers is a prickly plant that grows into mats over night!

Whatever you are doing,foraging, dancing, celebrating or weeding, May is the perfect time to turn off the news and get outside; to take joy in the wonderful world around us.  This old English bit of poetry expresses it well:

“’Tis merry in greenwood – thus runs the old lay ---In the gladsome month of lively May, when the wild birds’ song on stem and spray invites to forest bower……….dull is the heart that loves not then the deep recess of the wildwood glen, where the roe and red-deer find sheltering den, when the sun is in his power.”***

Carol weites from her home in Spencer. She may be reached at: carol42wilde@htva.net.

*Louis L’Amour –Quotation is from “Tucker”.  Louis L’Amour is an American writer, best known for his westerns, but also the author of several historic fiction novels, short stories of WWII and non-fiction.  1908 – 1988.

**Doug Larson from “Wisdom of the Crones.”  Doug Larson, columnist for Green Bay Press Gazette.  Noted for his clever one-liners.  1926-2017

***Sir Walter Scott ---Scottish poet and historian.  1771 – 1832.