May Day

It's May Day and the wheel of the year has turned halfway from where we started. May Day is the cross quarter opposite Halloween and the beginning of summer! Woo hoo! Like Halloween, May Day is a time when the veil between the worlds is thin but at this time it is not the veil to the shadow world of the dead but the veil to the bright world of the fairy that is thin. Instead of marking death with the Beloved Ancestors we celebrate life with the eternally young Fairy People.

Each of the cross quarter days, the days inbetween the solstices and equinoxes, have a door ritual associated with them. Today we still practice the Halloween ritual of soliciting treats door to door while the February and August rites are more obscure. One author suggests collecting rowan or other budding tree branches on the evening of February First, creating a bower or bouquet and hanging it over the door - all in silence. Smashing oat cakes agains the door frame as a house blessing is a common August First ritual. We all have a cultural memory of baskets or bouquets of flowers being left on doorsteps on May first. Cross quarters are the doorways to the seasons so it is all together natural to focus our celebrations on actual doorways on these days.

On the morning of May Day this year I woke up early and went for a walk around my neighborhood looking for flowers. The flowering of spring is reaching a crescendo and I had lots of variety to choose from. I collected a big bunch of lilacs, cherry blossoms, woodland hyacinth, basket of gold, candy tuft and a few other flowers from yards and lots around my house. They smelled so, so good! I wrapped them into little bundles tied with yarn and hung them on my coworkers' doorknobs in the morning. Everyone loved them. Happy May Day!

I've also been out collecting herbs, greens and flowers for my table as these evening stretch longer and longer after work. I collected nettles earlier in the spring but have found lots of mint, sorrel, melissa and comfrey this last week. Many people have heard that comfrey has liver toxins so should not be eaten, but I believe Susun Weed who has been consuming comfrey infusions and leaves for years. I also found a whole patch of wild mustard and have been enjoying the flowers in my salads. Who doesn't like flowers in their salads?

How are you celebrating the beginning of summer? What flowers are blooming around you? Do you feel a connection to the fairy people or other little people? How do you celebrate that connection?

Happy summer! Happy May Day!

Seed Moon is New

I am late in posting this month and the Seed Moon grows older every day. Again, we've had lovely clear weather here in Portland and I have been able to watch her as she grows each night from a little sliver to a happy plump crescent.

Annette Hinshaw calls this moon, the moon of the spring equinox, the Seed Moon and relates it to energies of starting projects. Seeds must grow, they must start, but a seeds "decision" to grow is a very chancy one, when you think about it. It was safe, warm, secure there in the seed coat. Once the seed starts growing it can't go back, but the wild world is very unsafe for a little seedling. What if a late frost or an early hailstorm happens? What if a young bunny thinks it looks delicious and takes a nibble? Or perhaps an unseasonable dry spell robs the young plant of the water it needs to grow? Oh, it was so much safer back inside the seed.

We humans face that problem too. Some mornings even getting out of bed seems like a herculean task. Lets not even talk about cleaning the bathroom or finishing that crochet project you started last fall. But beginning is something we must do, just as the seed must start to grow. In order to fulfill the potential we have within us we must find the courage to take that first step. Annette Hinshaw talks about how sometimes failure to begin is due to fear of failing and how sometimes it is due to fear of unintended consequences. I like to think that if we can find the courage to start then God will help guide what comes next.

Somethings, however, are a pleasure to start. Last weekend I did a lot of prep work in my garden to get it ready for planting next week. I also started out a new chapter of my life with a new housemate. It's been fun getting to know a new person and rearranging the house to fit his things and his life into a place so full of my things and my life.

Spring is a great time for new beginnings and I am enjoying watching everything burst into greens and yellows. The other day I took an early spring herb walk and was so happy to find little baby plants popping up all over the place. I was specifically looking for nettles but found lots more. Susun Weed, a master herbalist and wise woman healer, speaks at length of the nutritional qualities of nettle. She advocates making a nettle infusion to get your daily dose of minerals and vitamins from the plant world. I will soon go back up the trail and harvest the nettles I found after they've had a chance to grow up a bit.

I'll leave you with a poem I found recently that seems to speak perfectly to the themes of the Seed Moon. Trepidation at starting, anticipation of new beginnings and sheer joy at the physicality of spring!

Horses In the Spring

by Connie Wanek
photo by patmueller

Beware too much happiness!

The horses paused suspiciously before the open door,

snorting and stamping, while sunlight poured

onto the cold cement. They smelled snow

in the barn's shadow, mud along the south wall,

matted grass in the thawing pasture.

Their nostrils flared and their ears

lay back, then pricked forward, far forward,

and they stretched their elegant necks
as if the world were offering thema slice of sweet apple,

or something even more pure, on an open palm.....