May - Bringing Back the Sun

    May is always a dodgy month in Wisconsin.  It invariably starts out cold and bleak.  When, and whether, it warms up is anybody's guess. This year we had periods of wretchedly cold days followed by a few days of unusually warm weather and then a plunge back into near freezing temperatures again a few days after that.  It didn't snow, but it has thrown everybody's planting schedule off, from the corn farmers to the backyard gardeners.  The apple trees and lilacs bloomed in spite of it all.  They didn't seem to care, and for two weeks the entire town smelled of lilacs everywhere you went.  Breathing was heavenly.

    The first day of May is a holiday at our house.  I get up well before dawn to go watch the Madison morris dancers while Harvest resolutely burrows further under the blankets.  It's a longstanding tradition in England for troupes of morris dancers to go out to the countryside and "dance up the sun" on May morning, also known as Beltane.  The origins of morris dancing are lost somewhere in the mists of rural 16th century England, and there is a decided element of pagan ritual in the dances.  The tradition was imported to America about 60 or so years ago, and there are morris dance teams, called "sides," all over the US and Canada now.  Some groups are positively progressive and allow women (egad!), although this still appears to be a bone of contention among some diehard traditionalists in England.  Some things never change.  The dancers wear bells on their shins and fling hankies about or clash sticks or swords together while doing something that looks an awful lot like really complicated, airborne solo square dancing to music played by, of all things, an accordion (often badly).   It's not as easy as it looks: I tried it once and nearly put somebody's eye out with a stick.  Where there are maypoles, there are often morris dancers.  It takes a village to bring in the summer, especially in Wisconsin.  

    I've loved morris dancing ever since discovering it at the Southern California Renaissance Faire.  Finding morris dancers in Madison, Wisconsin was just dumb luck.  I didn't know there were any dancers at all in Wisconsin until an attorney I worked with sheepishly confessed that she was part of the Madison morris side, the Oak Apple Morris.  I think she was shocked to discover that not only did I know what morris dancing was; I was positively ravenous to see it.

     Seeing the Oak Apple Morris side dance up the sun on May morning involves getting up far too early in pitch darkness, putting on every possible warm layer you have knowing that it won't be enough, remembering to bring a thermos of hot tea, and then driving up the empty highway and through the deserted streets of Madison to find the gathering place by one of the lakes where the Oak Apple Morris will dance up the sun.  The event used to be by word of mouth only, like a secret society.  One had to be "in the know."   Even with Facebook, it's still something of a mystery.   

    The location can change unexpectedly, and this year I found myself at one of the regular dance locations only to discover it was happening somewhere else.  You know you have arrived at last when you can hear the rhythmic jingling of people with bells on their legs walking down the path through the gloom somewhere ahead of you. 

    This year the wind blowing off the lake was frigid, and because of rain the previous day, everything was damp as well as cold, so the fire that would usually be burning brightly to warm all of us wouldn't stay lit.   Still, we were there, and the sun came up, and we were grateful to be able to go have the traditional pancake breakfast and warm up at a local restaurant after a job well done. The Oak Apple Morris always does one dance at the restaurant, using table knives instead of sticks.  Some customers come every year to watch while others try to pretend there's nothing at all unusual about seeing eight people dressed in white, wearing hats with flowers on and bells on their legs jumping around with cutlery in their hands to a  tune from a battered accordion held together with duct tape and hope.  Nothing to see here.  Carry on.

Daffodils in our front yard defying the frost

            Harvest and I made our regular spring trip up to Cashton to drop off another clock for repair at the Amish clockmaker and find plants for the yard.  Many Amish farms run a thriving side business selling garden plants in the spring and mums in the fall.  There are so many greenhouses in the area that it doesn't really matter which road you turn down; there will be at least one greenhouse somewhere on it.  Two farms just across the street from one another might each have a greenhouse, but each one has their specialty.  One will be particularly good for vegetables and seed potatoes, another one has great perennials, a third specializes in spectacular hanging baskets.  We've been there enough times that we know where we want to go.  Of course, I hadn't even been looking for roses, but at one greenhouse I found two more to park in the front yard.  Harvest likes them, but she's getting a bit worried about where the next ones are likely to go. There are far worse addictions than flowers, I suppose: "What do we want?"  "All the plants!"  "Where will we put them?"  "We don't know!"  

     As I mentioned in a previous post, there is an elderly Amish lady who has the most exquisite perennial garden I've ever seen.  All the plants for sale are labelled, and if you like something, her granddaughter will dig it up for you in big clumps.  I bought several miniature iris, hens and chicks, and a smattering of other flowers.  Most of them now occupy the Fairy Garden on one side of the barn. 

 

               The Fairy Garden just beginning to bloom

    I keep adding a little something here and a little something there in no particular order.  I moved the sweet woodruff from the place where it had been sulking and sullen for years, split it up, and used it to line the front edge of the Fairy Garden.  This may have been a mistake.  The plant has now gone rogue and requires some aggressive maintenance to keep it from taking over.  Sweet woodruff is an herb associated with Beltane and May Day, and its sweet scent is such a blessing after the sterility of winter that I feel almost guilty pulling up any of it.  Almost.   

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

    I didn't have the heart to tell the Amish grandmother who owns the perennial garden that the poppy seeds she has given me twice now failed yet again.  Not a single sprout emerged even after the care I lavished on the area I planted the seeds in.  I have the large, oriental poppies growing quite successfully in that spot, but the European ones refuse to grow.  I may try again somewhere else with commercially packaged seeds, but I so wanted hers to become part of my garden.

    I hadn't thought anything about it when I got dressed the morning we went up to the Amish area, but I had chosen one of my solid color Victorian work dresses to wear.  The granddaughter of the elderly lady and I were walking through the perennial garden, and I was choosing plants to purchase, when two women dressed in t-shirts and shorts came directly up to me and started to ask me about the plants.  I had no idea why they would ask me when the granddaughter was standing right there, clearly visible, until I remembered what I was wearing - a full length burgundy dress.  They had mistaken me for an Amish woman.  I told them that she, the granddaughter, was the one to talk to, not me, and I felt pretty embarrassed.  However, as we were boxing up my purchases, the old lady's daughter came out of the house to chat, which was unusual in itself, and said she liked what I was wearing and thanked me for wearing clothing that was modest.  Modest, simple clothing is a cultural norm for the Amish, especially in conservative communities.  We both agreed that current fashion for young women is decidedly on the scanty side, to put it delicately.  I would never deny any woman the right to wear what she likes, but I can't help thinking that a lot of it looks like underwear.  

    It would never be my intention to imitate Amish clothing, but I was  glad that what I was wearing made people in that community feel more comfortable.  This has happened once before when I was at an auction in the same area while wearing a similar dress.  A young Amish woman came right over and sat down next to me, and we had a good, long talk about knitting and farming.  I'm sure neither of these women would have given me the time of day but for the Victorian work dresses, and I've learned a lot from these encounters.  Take away modern technology, and women in the country have a lot in common.

    May is also the first month of the reenactment camp events.  Harvest and I have been going to reenactor events for years - anything from the Renaissance to the Victorian age.  In Wisconsin, most of these events are called rendezvous and are attempts to recreate the fur trader or Revolutionary War period of American history.  This necessitates the wearing a lot of tricorn hats or leather breeches and the occasional volley of gunfire.   We tried taking Bear and Juju, our other corgi, to one of these events.  Many dogs are completely indifferent to the sound of cannons, but corgis are a bit put off, that is to say terrified, by the noise.  So Bear stays at home, and we go shopping.

    These evens are not nearly a elaborate as renaissance fairs, but they are also far less commercial and exist mostly for the enjoyment of the attendees. They're great place to shop for the kinds of things we like to buy. There aren't many places can you find a brass candle lantern to use for walking safely upstairs at night, and finding the right hand-forged striker for flint and steel isn't something you can pick up at a local hardware store (see "Matchess" from March 2021 for more about how flint and steel fire starters work).  There are interesting people to see and talk to, and some are real experts.  There is an entire series of events throughout the warm months in Wisconsin and the surrounding states, and we've gone to a number of them.  This May we visited the Bloody Lake Rendezvous in Woodford, Wisconsin.  I don't know why it's called Bloody Lake, and it's probably better not to ask.  

    We had hoped to find an iron worker there who could make us a pair of custom fire tongs, but the blacksmith who had been there for years wasn't there.  We did, however, find a cresset fire basket.  These are the original tiki torches.  You put a good amount of wood in them, the more resinous the better, set them aflame, and they'll burn like mad and light up the entire yard.  No, it's not specifically Victorian, but it's a great ambiance piece, and it will warm you up nicely if it's cold outside.  We would have welcomed one on May Day in the cold and wet.

    We also purchased a new salt jar for use in the kitchen.  We far prefer this to using a salt shaker since we can either dip a measuring spoon in or grab a pinch with the fingers.  Unless I'm baking, the finger method works best for me.  The jar was made by a potter who was selling her wares for the first time.

                                                                                                                                           

                                  And I did mention that there are interesting people to see?

                             This charming little girl could have easily ridden this dog.  For years.  

    In closing for May, we must bid farewell to Isis, the white Prairie Blue Egger chicken.  She laid the loveliest pale blue eggs, the largest of the whole flock.  She loved to fly and could get pretty well airborne for a short while if she ran like the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk just before takeoff.  She aways had her own mind about things and was prone to solo walkabouts, so when she didn't come in with the rest of the girls, I figured she was strolling somewhere in the shrubbery and would come when it got pretty dark outside.  Dusk came.  No Isis  It occurred to me then that I had seen her the prior morning, but I wasn't sure I'd seen her at all that day, and I wasn't certain that I'd seen her go out with the rest of the girls for an evening stroll.  Perhaps she was already on the roost.  I opened the back door of the coop to check, and there she was, still as a stone.  There wasn't a mark on her, and she hadn't exhibited any signs of illness. Sometimes chickens are fine one day and gone the next.  We will miss her antics and her eggs.