One winter or early spring when I was a boy my mom saved up several Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxtops and sent them in to the Kellogg’s Company and in exchange, an envelope full of flower seeds arrived in the mail. There were packets of zinnia seeds, and morning glories, and cosmos, four o’clocks and snapdragons and marigolds and who knows what else. We planted all the seeds that spring in one little plot in the front yard along the neighbor’s hedge. It was quite a lovely little flower garden, and one day I even saw a photographer out there, shooting pictures. I told Mom about that, and she was certain it was a photographer from the newspaper, and that our flowers would be in the paper. I’m not sure if she really believed that or if she was just telling me a story, but I felt that she was right. Our little flower garden, in my view, was worthy of news coverage.
Gardening was nothing new. Each year Grandpa would plant tomatoes and basil and eggplant and peppers and rocket and other staples of an Italian vegetable garden. But flowers were new to me. And the seed packets! They were so beautiful. A colorful illustration with the name of the flower printed in sharp black letters at the top. That was the first time I really noticed seed packet illustrations, and it made quite an impression on me. By the following winter, I was scouring the W. Atlee Burpee Catalog, and the George W. Park Seed Company Catalog, ordering seeds for next spring’s garden. I was thoroughly disappointed when the seeds from the mail order catalogs arrived in plain packets, rather than illustrated ones. Lesson learned.
At any rate, it is May, and here is our monthly gift to you: the printable Convivio Book of Days Calendar for the month. Our cover star this month is a seed packet from an even earlier time than Mom’s 1970s mail order stash from Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The packet gracing our calendar was first printed in 1900. Long before that, as far back as the late 1700s, the Shakers began selling garden seeds in packets for home gardeners. I came to love their seed packet designs once I began seeing them in my research at the Shaker Library at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community when I first went there for a book arts internship in 1996. The Shaker seed packets I saw there did not have beautiful illustrations but their typography was beautiful (which was indeed not the case with the plain packets I received from Burpee and Park when I ordered through the mail that winter in the late 70s).
Being the First of May, it is May Day, which is also known traditionally as Beltane, the day’s Celtic name. It is a cross quarter day: halfway between equinox and solstice. It is a time of increase. The days lengthen (as they’ve been doing since the Midwinter solstice in December) and we are fast approaching the longest day, which, for us in the Northern Hemisphere, will come with the Midsummer solstice in June. In traditional reckoning of time, today would be the very start of summer… which is why the approaching solstice takes the name Midsummer (even though the solstice is, by the almanac, the first day of summer). This approach has always felt more balanced to me. To have summer begin just as the days start to get shorter feels, to me, like the choreography of the sun and planet is a bit off. I like the old names Midsummer and Midwinter, and so I use them for this reason.
If there are maypoles in your neighborhood, this is very likely the day you’ll see them decorated with ribbons and flowers. You might also find a paper basket or cone full of flowers hung on your door, a rather sweet old tradition practiced by children. Most likely, if you live in the United States, the day will pass without notice. May Day and Beltane are celebrations not widely celebrated here. There are many such celebrations, thanks most likely to our Puritan roots and our tendency to work, work, work. But alas, as the saying goes, All work, no joy, makes Jack a dull boy.
OPEN STUDIOS DAYS: THIS WEEKEND!
Come see us at the shop this Saturday & Sunday, May 2 & 3, from 11 AM to 5 PM, as we (and other artists throughout Palm Beach County) open our doors for Palm Beach Cultural Council’s Open Studio Days. We’ll teach you how to make a small accordion book, perhaps with a bit of hot foil stamped text, and we’ll be serving cookies and our new Horn & Hardart Automat Coffee. Those things are free and on the house! Also free: help us continue writing the Exquisite Corpse story we began last weekend during Independent Bookstore Days. The story is coming along nicely and is, indeed, quite surreal (as the Surrealists, who invented this literary game, would have wanted it to be). We’ll also be open for great eclectic shopping, too, of course. We’re at 1110 North G Street, Lake Worth Beach, Florida 33460. CLICK HERE for the details, and also to browse our online catalog, and do come by this Saturday and Sunday, please!
Image: A seed packet from the Miss C.H. Lippincott Seed Company. From the Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection. Print on paper, 1900 [Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons].