A Soggy May Day

It's May Day! In Europe this was the holiday that welcomed the full blooming of the Earth as Spring slowly becomes Summer. It's a holiday that celebrates fertility and marriage; June weddings in the old days were often the result of May Day meetings dancing the May Pole dance. The contemporary May Day is descended from earlier Spring celebrations, most notably the Celtic Beltane, where we get the distribution of May (a flowering shrub) branches and the dance around the May Pole. It's a time of great merriment and fun.

Here in Shippensburg, though, our May Day is gloomy and rainy; if there's a May Pole anywhere about it's liable to be a bit bedraggled. Still, a walk through the Dykeman Spring Nature Park shows evidence of all that burgeoning fertility!

The guest house at the McLean House, showing off the flowering Dogwoods

Raindrops on the leaves along the Dykeman Walking Trail

Mama Goose sitting on her nest in the Dykeman Spring wetland

A Mallard family outing on the north duck pond

A strange tentacular fungus on a Red Cedar on the upland meadow

There were lots of Earthworms up on the meadow in all this dampness

Looking across the meadow toward the hill to the west

In Great Britain the Morris Dancers usually put on a show to celebrate May Day, and this carol is the centerpiece of that celebration. Let's all sing along!

Photos © 2016 by A. Roy Hilbinger