May Day-get your Gardening good luck for the year

Sea of yellow at the teaching gardens today

Yesterday was May Eve. It also happened to be one of the most glorious days of the year so far. My little brother, home from Boston is taking the credit, so when he leaves next week I hope it doesn't go back to shit.Apart from the importance of fine weather there is huge importance to the start of May itself that all but passes unnoticed nowadays. The 1st of May was a key day in the Irish farming calendar(and all over Europe too). Across the country hiring fairs were held where men found work according to their trade. Landlords negotiated new contracts with tenants and people on the land mushed pagan and Christianity together to ward off the living and the fairies while guaranteeing fine weather and a fair harvest!!

Exciting stuff isn't it? I love a bit of Pagan in the garden.
Depending on where you lived (and how superstitious the whole neighbourhood was) different methods were used. My Grandmother in Galway (and her neighbours) grew a particular tree in one of the fields. Each May eve a branch or two was cut down and pushed upright into the ground in the garden around the house and in one of the farm fields. Depending on which county you lived in different types of tree were used. My mother doesn't remember what Granny's tree was but" it had soft leaves like a willow".I'm thinking it must have been a fast grower considering two whole branches were lobbed of each year!

The children of the house decorated the tree with bunches of wild flowers. My mother remembers picking buttercups and primroses ( she thinks it might have been important that the flowers were yellow). Granny would have kept blue duck egg shells for weeks and brown hens egg shells too. These were put on the tree as decorations and finally the whole thing was blessed with holy water. This May tree acted as a powerful fairy and misfortune repellent. As an added protection Granny would never give eggs, butter or milk to anyone that day for fear of them taking the luck of the year with them. My mother remembers her hunting away anyone who made the mistake of showing up on May eve!!!

In Limerick on May eve they had a thing for lighting bonfires from the highest hill, in Tipperary they blessed each field with Easter holy water. Some superstitions or "piseogs" as we call them were so complicated that you had to prevent neighbours milking your cows or stealing eggs on May eve (out of spite and bad mindedness) while also staying up all night to guard against the fairies running off with your sons! What an exhausting day it must have been if you took all of it seriously!!

My May bush

In the interests of a good nights sleep and not turning psychotic in suspicion of my neighbours I decided to stick with the May bush, making a very basic model from a piece of hazel, one lonely broken eggshell and a few dandelions-my grandmother would not be impressed!-and to add insult to injury the holy water is yet to be found to bless it! As meatloaf said two out of three ain't bad.

So happy May day to all gardeners and farmers everywhere. May the luck of the gardening year be yours from today onwards.And if you get a chance perplex your neighbours by building your own may bush.

PS; in the last half hour managed to locate a bottle of holy water-the job is now complete!