May Day

We actually had enough flowers in our garden this year to pick flowers for the girls' teachers for May Day.  We picked tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths, and these little yellow filler flowers that I do not know the name of.  In fact, we picked all the daffodils that were blooming - the girls asked if we could plant more daffodils, so I will have to remember to do that in the fall.  The girls were so excited both to pick flowers and to give flowers to their teachers.  This is the first year that Amelia has helped make the basket herself; I had to give her a second sheet of aluminum foil because she initially crumpled the foil for the handle in on itself so that it was too short, but she got the idea the second time.  It reminded me of a few years ago when I had to explain to Becky how to make the foil baskets over the phone!

I don't think Amelia's teacher had any idea why Amelia was bringing her flowers in an aluminum foil basket, so as I was trying to explain our May day tradition to her, I looked up the origins of May Day on wikipedia.  It was very interesting to learn that it originated as a pagan custom in northern Europe to celebrate the start of summer, and that the giving on May baskets is only celebrated now in isolated pockets in the US.