“See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.”
Song of Solomon 2:11-12
Oh to be clothed as the flowers
To wear them as living jewels
To wear the blushes of the flowers
To weave them into crowns and into hair
To be meadow royalty… if only for a day.
And why not?
The extravagance of spring is abundant so paint yourself in petals!
Glorious spring! Every year the revival of world from barren to lush, brown to green, cold to warm, and drab to dazzling, brings such a sense of joy, exuberance, and rejuvenation. It’s wonderful we get a special day to just celebrate and be grateful for the beauty all around us! Happy May Day!
There are so many interesting traditions centering around May 1st. Every culture has its own versions. There are a few that I love and incorporate into my personal celebration. Take a peek into our May Day celebration this year:
May Day morning dawned sparkling blue. Breezy, warm sunshine flashed around through the trees and the birds filled the air with scintillating melodies. I took my coffee and went for a walk through the forest and into the wet grass to just soak in the shimmering air. One tradition I love encourages the washing of one’s face with the May morning dew for good health and lifelong beauty. How lovely to reach down into the wet grass and gather the crystalline dew drops to wash your face with! I sat very still on the edge of an expanse of tall grasses and watched the indigo buntings and cardinals come and land only a few feet away.
It was perfect weather to be outside- one of those amazing days that manages to be cool and warm all at once. Eventually we headed out into the meadow to collect flowers and greens for dinner. Meandering along finding edible and medicinal treasures in the grass (free food) is celebration of spring enough in itself. This is part of the second tradition I love for May Day: “bringing in the May.” We picked loads of flowers and some flowering branches even. Enough for arrangements for cooking with, and of course for making flower crowns!
As the evening drew near, we pulled together all the elements of a fabulous May Day picnic. It was a simple menu focused on beautiful, nutritious, and flavourful food.
I had baked some rustic bread loaves earlier. Nothing could be easier- it is just a matter of throwing together some flour, water, salt, and yeast and letting it rise before baking. No kneading required!
We paired the bread with an herbed butter which we essentially painted across a wooden cutting board and then pressed edible flowers into.
An incredibly delicious and easy salad was the main dish. Just a handful of spring green mix with lots of wild greens added into it. We topped it with wildflowers that taste good in salads such as dandelion and clover, as well as a some cucumber, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and the secret ingredient: strawberries! The dressing was a drizzle of olive oil off to the side sprinkled with balsamic vinegar. We had water with huge citrus-rose petal-clover-dandelion-honeysuckle ice cubes (made in a muffin tin!).
The crowning glory of the picnic was without a doubt the wildflower cookies and the fancy drink I made for the evening. The cookies were an easy vegan sugar cookie recipe that I adapted a bit. To half of the batch I added chopped rose petals, orange-flower water, almond extract, and vanilla. To the other half, I mixed in dandelion petals, lemon zest, and vanilla. Decorating them by pressing edible wildflowers into them was a feast for the eyes! It would be a really fun thing to do with children. The cookies dazzled everyone in the house and were declared too pretty to eat. I also made some shortbread with chopped rose petals, all the left over wildflowers, almond extract, and vanilla.
The drink was by far my favourite element of the picnic! Two days earlier I collected a few cups of honeysuckle blossoms from the edge of the forest. I made honeysuckle tea and refrigerated it. The steeped liquid turns a beautiful pale chartreuse colour and has that sweetly delicate flavour and scent of honeysuckle!! Finally there’s a grown-up way to capture that summery taste of childhood! I rubbed lemon and mint oil on the rims of the glasses and dipped them in sugar. The chilled honeysuckle tea was added next with a touch of sparkling water. Finally, I filled the glasses with lemon balm sprigs, a few rose buds, some thin slices of lemon and cucumber, and voilà! My new favourite drink. I will be drinking some version of this all summer! A more in-depth look at the menu will be coming in a separate post.
We took the whole array out to the ridge of a valley within perfect view of the sunset. The cool air, fantastic picnic, and spectacular sunset all combined into a crescendo of a truly wonderful May Day!
After the substantial amount of time it took to clean the kitchen, we left the third and final tradition in place for the weekend: May Day baskets! This is an old tradition that has lost popularity in the States these days, but I still remember a time when we made little paper baskets in school and hung them on the doorknobs for unsuspecting neighbors and family to find. Traditionally, the baskets are filled with flowers and sweets. We took some small jars, filled them with water and hid them in one side of the baskets with flower arrangements of blooming privet, honeysuckle (both of which smell incredible), roses, and some other wildflowers. Nestled around the flowers we tucked in all the shortbread and left the baskets for the household to find and help themselves to.
And there you have it! A perfect May Day celebration. So grateful for spring!
“…Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; without laboring or weaving. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Matthew 6:28-29
Words by Lydia
Photos by Lydia & Rachel
