May baskets

[mrissa]

Now that I'm a grown-up, I really miss May baskets. My mom and I worked like crazy on them each year. Some people just threw some candy in a styrofoam cup, scribbled the name on it, and called it good, but we were never satisfied with that. We would make handmade paper boxes or weave paper in and out of the green plastic strawberry baskets or something, something new every year. And we picked the treats very carefully. "Don't give Jill any orange Starbursts, she doesn't like the orange ones," I'd say, or she'd say, "Didn't Jenny really like those cookies we had at Valentine's Day? Maybe an extra one in hers." No one ever had any trouble guessing which baskets were ours, but we didn't mind.

I've thought about doing them as an adult, but our friends don't live in a concentrated enough area, even though it's better than it was in the Bay Area. If I'm going to drive even 15-20 minutes to people's houses, much less 30-40, I don't want to ring the doorbell and run away! I want to see them and spend time with them! Also I'm not sure how many people would get it. If you found a little decorated basket with fruit and nuts and candy on your doorstep on May 1, would you know what it was? Did you do May baskets as a kid?

I also would have loved to pick fruit for Arbor Day, like we always did, and maybe plant a few things, but most flowers and veggies really shouldn't be planted in April in Minnesota, and we're not in the market for a tree at our own house -- in fact, I believe I casually pulled up two or three poplar seedlings on Arbor Day, now that I think of it. They keep popling. I'm going to have to take the weed bucket out as soon as it's nice and pull up dozens of would-be trees. Our yard is convinced that it's supposed to be a forest. I like that it does that, but I can't let them grow nestled up to the house. Ah well.

Comments

[pameladean]

Elise and Juan used to go around very early on May Day leaving baskets on people's doorknobs. When my mother lived in the city rather than in Eden Prairie, she also left May baskets for her neighbors and for David and me.

My problem is with the getting up early.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Umm. My mom was not a morning person, and many of my friends' parents left for work early, so we kind of skipped the "early morning" part of it.

I think my problem would be the opposite: I'm too much a morning person and would have a hard time not waking people. I suppose I could refrain from ringing the doorbells, but that seems like cheating: there's no chance of getting caught if you don't ring the doorbell.

[retrobabble.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of May baskets. They sound great! I would have been totally charmed by the whole idea. (Ok, I am now. *g*)

It's a shame no one is close -- just because you're an adult is a prime reason for doing the baskets...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's not even so much that no one is close as that the geographic closeness doesn't map well to circles of friends or personal closeness. We could come up with an area we could be done with in an hour, but it would mean that some of our closest friends wouldn't get baskets and some people we hardly see would.

My brain has cheerfully supplied, "Well, you could have a brunch for the rest of them, the ones who weren't at ritual or the parade!" Someone squish my brain, please, before it strikes again.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

::squish::

always one to be obliging. ;)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You are a prince among Kevs.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I was just talking about May baskets last week to someone who had no idea what I was talking about! I loved making them as a kid, but I think no one makes them anymore.

[sraun]

Our yard is also convinced it should be a forest - but we get maple, elm and mulberry. Irene is trying to kill off the mulberry completely. The elm is probably going to be going away on its own - we've got some kind of elm disease on our block, over the next about five years all the boulevard elms are probably going to get taken down by the city. That will leave a couple of maples on the boulevard, and whatever they put in to replace them. Maybe I'll get lucky and we'll get a gingko?

[pameladean]

If you think that the removal of the boulevard elms *sob* will mean no more elm seedlings, you are an optimist. The seed will blow over from the next block. Suckers will sprout from the remaining stumps and roots and go to seed. Seeds already supplied will germinate late. Squirrels will bring little fallen branches full of elm seeds into your yard for a picnic and fail to eat them all.

I do hope you get a gingko, though. They are so surreal. We had one on the boulevard when we lived on Minnehaha.

P.

[sraun]

From what I've seen, it looks like all the elms are going to go in my neighborhood. :-(

The problem is that the boulevards are nearly all elms. Last year, the city had to take out at least one elm per block in my neighborhood. From my friendly neighbor, the horticulturist, this means a domino effect of dying elms - the disease is going down into the roots and up into the adjacent elm, the elms have a sequentially inter-penetrating roots structure, so we loose one elm in each direction per year until there's not an elm. And the streets are narrow enough that the disease can cross the street. So, in not too many years, every elm in the neighborhood is going to be taken out.

The fix - if you really want to keep your elm - is to pay someone to come in and physically separate the roots. This is ... not cheap. IIUC, it involves digging a narrow slit trench down 20 feet or so all the way around your elm.

When they put in all the elms, they should have been putting in two or three different trees, alternating species. That way, this domino effect wouldn't have happened.

I don't really expect the elm seedlings to go away completely - I just expect them to change from the massive numbers we get today to one or two a year.

We almost got a gingko for the back yard instead of the Northern Pin Oak. It was a close call. We would love to have one out front - to the point that we might be willing to buy one and put it in ourselves if the city will let us (after they take out the elm).

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Just make sure it's a male gingko (or out of the way of people/pet paths). I used to work at a cathedral with a female gingko right outside the office entrance, and the fruit gets all stinky when it splats all over the place. I once forgot to clean off my heels before getting into my car and it smelled of sour milk until I got it to the wash.

[sraun]

Yeah, we heard about that when we were researching. Apparently there was a neighborhood in St. Paul where the city put in a bunch of gingko's - they thought they were all males. Several years later, there was this significant purge...

Supposedly a supplier took a guarantee hit on that one.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

My college dorm had (probably still has) a row of gingkos all along the front. And they are decidedly *not* all male.

(So if anyone out there is ever thinking of studying botany at the U of PA, you might want to closely investigate how good the program is...)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We have poplars and oaks -- logically enough, since that's what we've got in the backyard, with a bit of birch for contrast. We had an unidentified tree in the front, but it died, and we're going to try tomatoes where it used to be.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I totally miss may baskets! I thought about doing them this year, but I realized it would be yet another way to feel shitty about my friends' lack of reciprocation. Besides, I'm leaving gifts on people's doorsteps year 'round.

If someone did one for me I would probably cry, eat the candy, then try to figure out who it was.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you could use some pampering lately.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Yep, I had a hard week, and have holed up at home to read books until I can be trusted to be pleasant to others. Sometimes it takes a while.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Books are much easier than people some weeks. I hope next week is better.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I never heard of May baskets until now, but they sound lovely. I approve of any holiday that involves gifts of food.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For me, days ending in y are holidays involving gifts of food. Or can be, at least. May Day, Valentine's Day, Christmas Day, Tuesday....

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I had never heard of May baskets. We had Maypoles on occasion, and in college I saw people observing May Day. But never baskets. Interesting.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What did you see them doing, in college?

[mkille.livejournal.com]

"Workers of the world, unite! Here, take a flyer. The people united can never be defeated! Here, want a brochure?"

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

You know, the girls and I have done May baskets in years past (we did them last year) and I didn't even think of doing them this year. I blame the weather. It didn't even occur to me to do up baskets of violets to put on doorknobs when it's snowing outside.

Observed MayDay celebrations

[thorintatge.livejournal.com]

When I went to Carleton, the Druids celebrated May Day under the name Beltain. They had a lot of ceremoines, some serious and by the book, such as one where a cup is passed around a circle, and some screwballish, often involving donuts. Everyone would then hang out outside, dance to fiddle music, give each other tarot readings, enjoy natural and homemade foods, laze about, and just generally gambol. There was a Maypole and a dance to go with it, but no May baskets anywhere to be found, alas.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

We did May Baskets a few times when I was a kid; they consisted of construction-paper baskets filled with dandelions, with which we delighted our neighbors. :)

[carbonel]

May baskets are a thing out of children's books for me. I've never been part of a culture that did them. Ditto for Easter baskets, on account of being Jewish.

The closest thing I can think of is Purim bundles, or shalach manot, which are much the same sort of thing but don't generally have the spring connotations for me. I still remember when Felicia and Judy (I think this was pre-Rachel) dropped off a Purim bundle for me in my old house on Minnehaha (coincidentally, the one with the gingko that Pamela mentioned). It was such a pleasant surprise.

May baskets sound like a very fine thing.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

We did Easter askets despite being Jewish, courtesy of public school.