Last Frost Date
Outdoor Planting, Whit Sunday, and A Tangent on Folk Dancing
Now Can We Plant Outside?
According to the Michigan State University Extension office (MSU is our agricultural/ land grant university), our last frost date here should be May 28. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, it was predicted to be May 7. I do have a fair amount of trust in the Almanac, but we had frost last night (our 2nd in a week) so in this case it was wrong. This weekend is the Memorial Day holiday here in the U.S., and it’s generally safest to save our outdoor planting until then. A couple of years ago, I got overeager to plant and was lulled by Midwest False Spring. I paid for my folly with damaged tomato plants. I did learn from that experience, though, which is not always the case with me.
That Memorial Day weekend, we noticed all sorts of leaf damage to various plants. In addition to internet searches and crowdsourcing your gardening friends, did you know you can email your local ag extension for free advice? As suburb dwellers, this was an amazing discovery. We sent photos of our plant problems to MSU Extension and received emails back from experts with diagnoses and solutions, from fungal spread on our lemon balm to soil & watering issues with our new blueberry bushes. You can search for your local extension on the USDA link here.
The weeds haven’t waited for the last frost date to come up, so there will be some additional prep to do before planting in ground this weekend. We’ve only planted cold-hardy and frost-tolerant plants so far: peas, beets, radishes, lettuce, kale, onions, and flower seeds approved for early spring. So far, the 3rd planting of bean seeds has survived after its predecessors fell to the rabbits.
Whitsun
May 28th this year is also the Christian feast of Pentecost, marking the descent of the Holy Spirit to the disciples of Jesus. It is a moveable feast (the date varies year to year) that is celebrated 50 days after Easter. The first Pentecost took place on the Jewish Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), a harvest festival of “first fruits” that falls 50 days after Passover. The liturgical color of the day is red, for the fire of the Holy Spirit (Our kids still follow that phrase with “like a blowtorch” after an especially cringey Pentecost homily by a visiting priest).
Whit (“White”) Sunday, or Whitsun, is the name for Pentecost from the English Middle Ages, and the definite origin of the name is lost to time. It is presumed to refer to the color of the garments worn for the baptisms which were popular on that day. Our 11-year-old thinks it may have derived from the white dove that is also used to symbolize the Holy Spirit. In addition, Whitsuntide was a popular time for coronations.
Processions for Whit Sunday (which included the following Monday & Tuesday, thus Whitsuntide) became a popular 19th century substitution for the ancient fairs and feasts (“Whitsun Ales”) that had marked the holiday for centuries. This corresponded with the decline in popularity of Rogation Day processions, likely due to the movement of populations from farms to cities. From a trial period beginning in 1965 to its 1971 setting in law, the British government merged Whit Monday with the Spring Bank Holiday on the last Monday in May, effectively separating it from its religious origins. This year, however, it does fall on the proper liturgical date.1
You can watch this 1 1/2 minute snippet of a mid-1960’s Whit Monday procession in Manchester, in old newsreel style narrated with a Trans-Atlantic accent:
I love the Maypole ribbons; what a clever way to keep track of the younger children! And they harken back to springtime agricultural customs.
Morris Dancing
Speaking of Spring fertility rites, I traveled down a doozy of a rabbit hole while researching Whitsun this month. (Get it? Maypole— celebration of fertility— rabbits? Tee-hee.) Morris is a type of English & Welsh folk dancing that dates back to the 15th century, and by the 17th century it was a common feature at Whitsun celebrations. The dancers, who contrary to popular belief were not always men, wear garters of bells around their knees and dance in groups called Morris “sides” using props of handkerchiefs or sticks. (I much prefer the sticks. I shared a video of Morris Men waving the handkerchiefs with my sister, & she thought it would fit well in a Will Ferrell movie. Their enthusiasm was unmatched by their skill.) The video below is a good example of Morris dancing, in typical festive costumes & without the previously traditional face paint that, purposely or not, problematically resembled blackface.
After watching a few videos hours of folk dancing on YouTube, I listened to this Folklore Library & Archive podcast episode on girls’ Carnival Morris dancing. Which then sent me back to YouTube of course. This offshoot of Morris dancing, which began to develop in the mid-1800’s, is specific to the Northwest of England and is now done competitively. You can watch an example in the video below, and from my viewpoint here in the Midwestern US, it looks like a marriage of Pompon and Irish dance:
The researcher being interviewed on the folklore podcast was clear in her delineation of Carnival Morris as a folk practice, and as pre-dating & developing separately from cheerleading as seen at sporting events and “majorette” competitions. But as the proud sister & cousin to pom dancers, who’s watched a lot of pompon routines, I can’t help but think there must be a connection. It’s separate from cheer; pom squads are their own entity and have their own competitions. The precise synchronized dance movements that include handheld poms and are done to contemporary music seem more closely related to Carnival Morris than to cheer squads, even if pom teams do perform at football games. Is there a historical connection between the two that has yet to be rediscovered? The internet tells me that cheerleading started in the UK in the 1860’s, while there were no US girls’ cheer squads using poms until the 1930’s. So I wonder…
If you stuck with me through that tangent…
Welcome back to the world of gardening! This holiday weekend, we’ll be planting some seeds and starts in ground. The tomato and pepper plants need more time under the basement grow light, but the squash is about ready to meet the outside world. We had a poll in our Instagram stories this week on what to plant around our compost bin, and the winners were pumpkins and wildflowers so we’ll get those going. The front garden bed by our bay window needs flowers. Herbs will start out in pots, then find a place in the fenced garden and between the larger fruit bushes.
How will you be spending your weekend? Is it a holiday where you live? Is it past your last frost date? What are you planting, tending, or harvesting in late May?
However you’ll be spending it, I wish you a great weekend. And as always, happy gardening!
—Erin, in Michigan
Much of the info here on Whitsun is from Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year, by Eleanor Parker. You can purchase this & other books by clicking this link to our virtual storefront on Bookshop.org. It’s an affiliate link, which means that Bookshop allots us some of the proceeds of the sale, at no additional cost to you. Thanks for checking it out!
I do, they've been in the semi-shade of the back porch for weeks now, and we're installing a bamboo shade to cool it down. Fingers crossed!
Your blogs are delightful! Love the history and humor! I will be rereading this one!
I am determined to make headway with my flower garden areas this weekend!