Sunday, April 26, 2026

Memories of May 1

 When I was a girl I read in a Susan Branch book about the folkloric belief in the healing and beautifying powers imbued in the dew of May 1st. Since then it's been thirty years,  and I have made a point to celebrate May 1st by touching the dew, gathering flowers, crowning Mary and eventually collecting ounces of dew in bottles and pyrex measuring cups. 

Images from my Instagram Memory entitled "May 1"


Wooden Marian shrine nailed to a flowering tree

Dew drops in blue bottles

May 1st by Beach Fossils

A dark recess in the bamboo provides a vignette for a suspended stick, wrapped by a dead vine like a snake

Black rubber boots and a white April Cornell nightgownThree miniature bottles of dew on the windowsill, corked

Recipe for Beltane lemonade

Deer tracks and tufts of hair in the cracked, muddy, entrance to the woods

A sighting of a centaur on the dirt road

Sandals with iridescent straps on the cypress porch

A turreted castle surrounded by lilac flowering bushes

A carpet of purple prairie verbena along the dirt road

Multi faceted crystal bottle of May dew with stopper

Thistle sprite

Giant wisteria bunch in the woods we called "our mistletoe"

An aproned woman disappearing into the darkness of the woods, surrounded by fireflies

A fresh bottle of dew with roses

Touching a drop of dew on the cattle fence

White dress and overlay doublet tied twice at the waist

May crowning and goûter at the Academy atop the Holy Coteau

Singing the Magnificat in rounds

Touching the dew that remained in the pine shadow to our faces 

Self-heal flowering on my path

Procession and bouquet of blue Louisiana irises for Mater

Pink, light blue and white linen, a light blue cameo

Fresh swamp roses, a prairie painting 

Marius plays the Mardi Gras song, adds a minor harmony

Blue pool, a clean journal page

Elderflower tops floating in the water




No comments :

Post a Comment