May Day

People don’t celebrate May Day anymore — at least not the floral holiday that occurs on May 1st. The international workers’ day celebrated in many countries, yes. But I’m talking about May Day baskets delivered on doorsteps.

Some elementary school teacher started me on the holiday years and years and how many years ago. I think the holiday was fading even then, but the teacher told us the lore anyhow, about how May 1st was a day when one made May baskets and filled them with flowers, and then left them on someone’s porch. Even in first grade, I got the impression that it was supposed to be a heterosexual flirtation ritual — probably because of the part where you’re supposed to kiss the giver if you caught them delivering the basket. And we didn’t have anything but heterosexual flirtations back then because it was the Sixties.

I delivered May baskets in my 20s. I made a list, mostly male, of people I wouldn’t mind flirting with. And, strangely, I gave them a fighting chance not to catch me. It seems odd now that I would try not to get caught if I were flirting with them, but that’s the way the holiday works. I had some close escapes, including throwing myself over the railing of a fire escape to avoid being caught.

I have not delivered May baskets in years, even before I got married (and that was 19 years ago). I’ve gotten too busy, and don’t have a good block of time to mastermind a basket for my husband. When am I going to make the basket with him underfoot? How am I going to bake cookies? The tradition has died with me.

While My Garden Sleeps

While my garden sleeps, I make big plans for it. Each year I learn more about how to make it bigger and more interesting. I have always had what one calls a “green thumb”, although I’ve also had my share of mistakes.

When I was seven years old, my mom’s cousin Dale Hollenbeck brought me all the spindly, sickly plants on his shelves to try to bring back to life. By some mystery, it turned out that I could actually keep them alive. I may not have brought them back to vigor, but I could at least give them a fighting chance at a couple more years.

I didn’t know a lot about gardening, as was evidenced by the time I planted a kidney bean in a peanut butter jar in the pure clay soil of our backyard. By some miracle, the bean came up — well, the stem came up, but the bean itself with its seed leaves remained in the clay. I was left with a botanical mystery — the headless chicken of the plant world, which persisted in its barely animate form.

Perhaps the most important childhood moment for me as a gardener was the discussion I had at age 14 with my neighbor and almost-grandfather, Johnny Belletini. Johnny taught me a small but extremely important lesson — all plants had names, even weeds, and even the weeds could be useful. Most importantly, he taught me about dandelion wine. This led to a very enthusiastic me running back to my house with a dandelion wine recipe in hand and forbidding my parents from mowing the lawn until I picked all the dandelion flowers for wine. (Note: there is nothing forbidding a fourteen-year-old from making dandelion wine in US statute. They just can’t drink it.) My parents and I spent four good years making wine as a result, until I left for college. But I digress.

I didn’t get back into growing plants (or winemaking, for that matter) until after I got my Ph.D., mostly because I had neither the time nor the place to garden. I dabbled in landscaping my wee rental house in Oneonta NY with shade plants because that’s all I had to work with. When I moved to Maryville and bought a house, however, my dreams of gardening blossomed (ahem) again. My taste in gardening developed.

At my first house, I had no basement, no sunny windowsills — and a taste for cottage flowers that would frame my cute little acquisition. I couldn’t find the plants I wanted at the local greenhouse. My father and I built me the world’s smallest greenhouse out of four wooden-framed storm windows, and I started seeds there every year for a while., running a cord out the back door to the chicken house heater that kept it warm. If the electricity went out, an entire crop could be ruined, and that happened at least once.

I live in a bigger house now with my husband, and this house has a full basement. In the room that used to be the coal room, the previous owner fitted it with shelves. We fitted it with shop fluorescents and grow bulbs, and I now have a grow room big enough to handle 12 seed flats.

The gardening theme at this house: Everything I plant needs to have something edible about it except for the moon garden, whose plants tend to be white-flowered, strongly scented, and toxic. Right now, I have the seed flats waiting for seeds at the right planting time. I have some seeds cold-stratifying in the basement refrigerator with some roots that I will plant in the spring. I have a piece of ginger which I hope will sprout so I can plant it for a bigger yield later this year.

As always, I have big plans for the garden as it slumbers in its February torpor.

Dreaming of a Garden

I dream of violets breaking through the earth,
presenting themselves with shy giggles,
and the ferns unfurling their fronds in stately parade,
Even the scruffy dandelions will come,
elbowing each other for room,
boldly declaring their rights under the sun.

For now, I must be satisfied with dreams
of introducing new lives in the garden —
rhubarb and greens and humble turnips all
slumbering in shells in cool, dry packages.

My Garden

Hands in soil, coaxing life from dust,

I hold a secret, just one secret —

the way the light hits reminds me

of a summer evening —

hands, large hands, holding mine

for the briefest moment,

and my imagination spinning into flowers —

wild pinwheels

and concealing vines with scarlet funnels.

I couldn’t make him see the flowers,

and that’s how I could tell I was different.