I would like to begin this post by admitting that i never knew what a May Day was until i watched the BBC miniseries Cranford this winter with Jeremy. Still waiting for Abby to be born, my mind was a blank canvas for gathering ideas about how i would raise her and what sort of special traditions we'd start together.

When i saw all the members of Cranford, England dressed in their Sunday best sharing handmade goods and homemade delectables in a beautiful garden, i thought: that is adorable. And i immediately told Jeremy that i wanted to implement the tradition of a May Day in our family, starting with our little girl.

The origins of May Day go way back to pre-Christian times, and has over the years come to mean many different things to many different countries. In the United States, May Day was a day to deliver "May Baskets," small baskets filled with flowers and treats that one would leave on the doorstep of another and run away before they were seen, or else risk being caught and kissed by that person. Now, depending on where you live in the world, there are May Day parades, dances, bonfires and feasts. There is simply no end to the possible ways you can partake in this wonderful holiday.

As Abby is still too young to really understand the changing of seasons and how to celebrate them, there wasn't much i could do to make the day much different than any other. But it was a nice day - slightly cool, but sunny - and i was determined to begin this tradition right away. So i put on her sun hat and took her out onto the porch with me, where we used an empty organic milk carton to design a little bird house, and an empty organic egg carton to plant Sweet Pea (for my Sweet Pea, whose head still has plenty of growing to fit into that adorable sun hat).

In the future, i'd like to incorporate the May Baskets somehow. And maybe some jelly-canning. And maybe an all-out springtime festival. Though in order to accomplish all these things, we may have to have several May Days - and that's okay, right?

I have no idea if the Sweet Pea will grow (we are starting them indoors), and the bird house will take me some time (hard to focus on gluing a hundred little twigs to a milk carton with a baby), but it's a start. Our first little May Day together.