Day 201: There are only a few occasions when I cut flowers from my garden to bring indoors, and May Day is one of them. When I was in elementary school, the custom of leaving May baskets on friends' and neighbours' porches was still in common practice. We usually made the baskets at school, sometimes simply making cones, other times weaving paper strips together. We'd fill them with whatever we could purloin, ostensibly from our parents' gardens, but often as not, they included things we'd snitched elsewhere, and nearly always, the baskets were augmented by dandelions or other flowering weeds. The idea was that you would hang the basket on your neighbour's front doorknob, ring or knock, and then run away to hide behind a bush or the corner of the house. The neighbour was always expected to exclaim, "Oh, someone has left us flowers!" or other appropriate phrase, as if they had forgotten the day entirely. It was such a simple gesture of thoughtfulness and friendly remembrance, but somehow the practice has faded into near-oblivion today. So, because I cannot knock on your door, my May basket for you comes as a photograph. Happy May Day!
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