Decorating the Maypole

Alas! no acorn from the British oak

'Neath which slim fairies tripping wrought those rings

Of greenest emerald, wherewith fireside life

Did with the invisible spirit of Nature wed,

Was ever planted here! No darnel fancy

Might choke one useful blade in Puritan fields; 

With horn and hoof the good old devil came,

The witch's broomstick was not contraband,

But all that superstition had of fair,

Or piety of native sweet, was doomed. 

And if there be who nurse unholy faiths,

Fearing their god as if he were a wolf

That snuffed round every home and was not seen,

There should be some to watch and keep alive

All beautiful beliefs...

                                                      James Russell Lowell

 Yesterday being Midsummer's Eve and the Swedish Midsommar festival being canceled because of the virus, my sister and I decided to have our own little celebration! I was toying with different ideas, but after reading The Maypole of Merrymount (for the second time - I love Hawthorne's beautiful stories so much!😊), I knew just what we would do! 

"Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on midsummer eve. This venerated emblem was a pine-tree, which had preserved the slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the old wood monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner, colored like the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with silvery leaves, fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden flowers, and blossoms of the wilderness, laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so fresh and dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine-tree. Where this green and flowery splendor terminated, the shaft of the Maypole was stained with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top. On the lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of roses, some that had been gathered in the sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still richer blush, which the colonists had reared from English seed. O, people of the Golden Age, the chief of your husbandry was to raise flowers!" 

Ours is very modest by comparison, but we had a lot of fun! We waited until evening because the high-temperature yesterday was 98F! We had just finished as the sun went down...

The first rose of summer...