Three Cheers and a Sweater for May Day

 Sunday will be May Day, the ne plus ultre of spring celebrations (at least for those of us placidly blooming where we are planted in a free-market economy). The Patient Spouse will be there with bells on, literally, helping to summon in the summer as a member of a Morris dance troupe he has participated in for the past year. This very old dance form has, apparently, something to do with, variously: fertility, battle, and drinking craft-brewed beer. On May Day, the official launch of the Berkshire Morris Men's brief season, it also may involve an early dip in a nearby lake at dawn. It is supposed to be 41 degrees this May Day, and I am very glad to hand this rite of the agricultural calendar over to those with more chill tolerance than I.

     Instead of jumping around hitting sticks together or rushing headlong into an icy tarn, here is my tribute to the soul of the season. Above, the height of tulip bloom in the perennial border: these are mutable yelllow-to red "Gudoshnik" tulips and smaller species "Candy Cane" tulips.
    Next, coffee in the garden yesterday afternoon, (a version of Tasha Tudor's "Delectable Elevenish Parties") just after I installed two "T-Post Platforms" created from scrap lumber according to Herrick Kimball's great design from his "Whizzbang" book. (You can get one at his blogsite or from the Fedco catalog; if you grow vegetables, it's worth every penny.) Once again, his designs are greater than the sum of their parts. This ingenious creation, made at the cost of four 2" screws per platform, means not only the end to spilled or dirt-filled coffee, but also a way to keep from tearing open shins or thighs or elbows on these snaggly salvage posts, which form the ends of my caterpillar cloche system. Kimball is a genius!

Our new chicks may not be geniuses, but this was the day they graduated. Here they are, our suppliers-of-manure, in their new digs in the chicken house (that white building at the far end of the garden in the previous shot). They have reached the teenage stage, with much sizing-up of each other, tiny mock battles, scurryings-about and short flights when they get the urge. That's my crop of wheat from last year they are standing on. It never reached a state of edibility, but they should know that's homegrown, hand-harvested straw they're standing on, and it is the last of my precious four bags of the useful stuff. Next year, it may be I'll accept my neighbor's offer of tractor help after all and grow another crop of it on the narrow "dogleg" of property that runs behind our neighbors' properties. Meantime, things are settling down to business here at First-Flower Farm, come cold rains, lords-a-leaping or what-have-you. Blooming!