We’re celebrating the start of spring at Seasonal Wisdom with fun garden tips, seasonal recipes and old folklore.  “Spring would not be spring without bird songs,” said Frances M. Chapman.  We agree!  Singing birds, flowering trees, baby rabbits, tender lettuces, sweet peas and so much more…

Here are some of Seasonal Wisdom’s favorite resources for spring.  Photo via Isabel Lawrence Photographers.

Spring Garden Guide

Some things never change. March and April are still extremely busy times for gardeners; just as they were more than 330 years ago.

“In March and in April, from morning to night

In sowing and setting, good housewives delight

To have in a garden, or other like plot

To physic their house or to furnish their pot.”

Markham, The English Housewife, 1683

To help you “delight to have … a garden,” don’t miss this Seasonal Wisdom Spring Garden Guide with timeless gardening advice, regional spring growing tips, garden-fresh recipes and much more.

Spring Holidays and Folklore

Spring Equinox

So, what exactly is this spring equinox, and what does it have to do with Easter? Read this cool trivia about the official start to Spring.

St. Patrick’s Day

Okay, so St. Patrick’s Day isn’t officially spring yet. But it’s only a few days before – and this Irish holiday is a common time to plant your peas.  Enjoy this folklore about St. Patrick’s Day you probably didn’t know.

Easter

What do an ancient goddess, fertile rabbits and decorated eggs have to do with Easter? Glad you asked. Here are some strange facts about Easter.

May Day

Believe it or not, the first of May was one of the most important days of the year in earlier centuries.

Find out why May Day was once considered a scary time, and how it didn’t always occur in spring. Here’s a historical look at May Day.

Don’t forget to celebrate with a glass of May Wine, featuring sweet woodruff flowers and leaves. Enjoy this May Wine recipe, and let me know what you think.

Enjoy Your Spring

A Spring Gargle for the Throat

Red rose buds dry and unfolded about a tablespoon, to which add

a half a pint of boiling water. After letting it stand an hour,

strain and add a tablespoon of rose vinegar

and a little sugar, if you like.”

The Housekeeping Book of the Saunders Family Women, Ann Saunders

Spring is right around the corner.  I know it’s hard to believe in some parts of the country. But it’s not too soon to start sowing seeds for spring and summer food harvests … or at least, thinking about what you might want to plant when the soil finally thaws.

To get your garden off to a great start, here is a mini Spring Garden Guide with some of Seasonal Wisdom’s favorite resources. It’s illustrated with photos from the inspiring 2014 Northwest Flower & Garden Show in Seattle. Come take a peek.

Spring is such an easy time to love in the garden and home.  As the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Spring is the time of plans and projects.”  It’s a time for new births and new beginnings, especially in nature.

Before we step out into the garden, however, let’s look at our homes first. To help get your home ready for the season, here is Spring Feng Shui Advice from Ann Bingley Gallops of Open Spaces Feng Shui.

Regional Spring Garden Advice

Spring is an excellent time to prepare your soil for healthy gardens. Add organic matter like compost, worm castings and well-aged manures to your soil.  Clean up winter debris in the garden. Cut away broken or diseased branches, but don’t prune spring-bloomers until after they flower. Check on the conditions of your sprinklers.  Make sure the garden shed is organized and ready, and that’s for starters…

In some places spring had sprung a few weeks ago. In other areas, spring seems like a dream that may never come. Each region has different spring garden chores and timing. Here’s advice from university extension services from different regions around the United States:

Northeast: Cornell University

Southeast: Clemson University

Midwest: University of Illinois

Central: Texas Agrilife Extension Master Gardeners

Intermountain West:  University of Colorado

Northwest: Oregon State University

California: University of California Master Gardeners

Growing Food in Spring

Spring is the time to get your seedlings started for the growing season.  Some crops like lettuces, peas, radishes and carrots can be sowed directly in the garden. Others, such as warm-season tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, are best sowed indoors about 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost date.

Here’s a brief primer on how to grow food from seeds, including seed resources, and tips on what to start indoors and what can be sowed directly in the garden. 

Need new seeds? Here are six questions to ask before buying seeds.

Are your seeds still good? Here’s how long vegetables seeds will stay viable.

Don’t let damping off disease kill your baby seedlings. Here’s advice.

Eating Well in Spring

Make sure these foods are in your spring meals! Seven Spring Vegetables to Eat Now

Growing Spring Foods

Garden-fresh foods always taste best. Here are gardening tips and photos of different spring foods, including interesting heirloom and hybrid varieties:

Beets  

Broccoli

Cool Season Veggies

Cool Season Vegetables to Grow From Seeds

Carrots, Peas and Salad Greens

Carrots for rocky, clay soils

Lettuces  

Radishes

Spring Garden Basics

And just a few more basic tips for your spring garden:

How to Read a Fertilizer Label

Basic Pruning Tips for Healthy Garden

Enjoy your spring garden! And don’t forget these wise words from author Margaret Atwood, “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” We agree.

Contributor: As another New Year begins, it’s interesting to consider the traditional Chinese solar calendar, which featured 24 mini-seasons closely tied to what was happening in the natural world.  These 24 solar terms helped farmers remember their way through nature’s growing cycles.

This sounded like a topic we had to explore further at Seasonal Wisdom, so we asked Ann Bingley Gallops of NY-based Open Spaces Feng Shui to provide a quick overview of these fascinating 24 solar terms that make up the Chinese solar calendar.  It’s little wonder why these nature-oriented calendar terms still ring true to us today. Come take a peek.  All photos  courtesy of Jeriff Cheng on Flickr.

Seasonal Wisdom readers may remember these helpful winter, spring, summer and  fall Feng Shui tips for your home from Ann Bingley Gallops of NY-based Open Spaces Feng Shui.

Here’s what she had to say about the 24 solar terms in the traditional Chinese solar calendar:

As a Feng Shui consultant I am exposed to many fascinating aspects of ancient Chinese culture and how these ideas can benefit us in the world today.

A primary concern that drove the foundation of Feng Shui and many other East Asian concepts was the need for farmers to protect their crops under challenging circumstances ranging from armed attacks to a vague understanding of when to plant and harvest crops.

Feng Shui branched off to create ideas such as the Commanding Position, helping farmers decide on the best locations to place their farms for safety and abundant growth.

The crucial need to know how to manage their farms for the greatest health and profit caused them to invent an annual calendar called the Solar Term, in which the year is divided into 24 narrowly-defined “seasons,” which told farmers what to expect from the climate as the year went by.

The divisions were created using the traditional Chinese solar calendar, according to the point at which the sun reaches 24 equally-spaced points along the ecliptic longitude.

Many, many centuries later, these 24 seasons still have relevance today.   

Some of the seasons define annual solar events, such as the Spring and Fall Equinoxes and Summer and Winter Solstices.

Others have wonderfully evocative names that embody the wonders of the changing year such as Waking of the Insects (March 5), Slight Heat (July 7), Heavy Snow (December 7) and so on.

I find myself musing on these mini-seasons as each year goes by and hope you will enjoy knowing about them too.

Here are the 24 Solar Terms of the traditional Chinese Solar Calendar:

• Spring Begins  ———-Feb. 2-5
• The Rains ——————Feb. 18-19
• Insects Awaken ———–March 5-6
• Vernal Equinox———–March 21
• Clear and Bright ———-April 5
• Grain Rain —————–April 21-22
• Summer Begins ——-May5-6
• Grain Buds —————-May 21-22
• Grain in Ear —————June 5
• Summer Solstice ———June 21-22
• Slight Heat —————-July 7-8
• Great Heat —————-July 23-24
• Autumn Begins ——Aug 8-9
• Stopping the Heat ——-Aug 23
• White Dews —————Sept. 7
• Autumn Equinox——–Sept 22-23
• Cold Dews —————-Oct 8-9
• Hoar-Frost Falls———Oct 23
• Winter Begins ——–Nov 7-8
• Light Snow —————Nov 22-23
• Heavy Snow ————-Dec 7-8
• Winter Solstice ———-Dec 21-23
• Slight Cold —————Jan 5-7
• Great Cold —————Jan 20

Source: People’s Daily Online

All photos courtesy of Jeriff Cheng on Flickr, who documents the different 24 seasons beautifully throughout the year.

About the Author: 

Ann Bingley Gallops, owner of Open Spaces Feng Shui in Brooklyn New York, is an expert Feng Shui consultant, blogger and speaker. A Feng Shui consultation with Ann helps you get unstuck, create a positive environment where you can blossom and thrive, and attract abundance in every part of your life.

Ann is the author of Map Your Space To Change Your Life: A Guide To The Feng Shui Bagua. She practices Feng Shui with an MBA from Columbia University, a Practitioner’s Certificate from the Western School of Feng Shui, and Red Ribbon Professional membership in the International Feng Shui Guild.

Follow Ann on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, and on the Open Spaces Feng Shui blog.

Contributor: Learn how to jump-start your spring with these expert Feng Shui tips by NYC-based consultant Ann Bingley Gallops of Open Spaces Feng Shui. You may remember Ann’s excellent winter feng shui tips last year. Now — just in time for spring — Ann provides spring Feng Shui advice to get your season off to a great new beginning. Here’s what she has to say…

Photo copyright Samatt of Flickr.

Entering the new beginnings of spring through a beautiful archway.

Photo copyright Ann Bingley Gallops.

Spring is finally here in all its beautiful glory!  Doesn’t it feel as though things start afresh every year at this time?  Not-so-coincidentally, perhaps, in Feng Shui spring is considered the season of New Beginnings, symbolized by young plants pushing their way up through the ground.

Feng Shui also associates spring with the idea of Family – your immediate family and close friends, as well as close colleagues at work.  You can think of your family as the roots of your being, your DNA, your very own New Beginnings.

Using these rich ideas, there are many wonderful ways to celebrate the arrival of spring with Feng Shui.  Here are a few of my favorite spring Feng Shui tips:

Update your snapshots of friends & family! Photo copyright Ann Bingley Gallops.

• Honor your most important relationships by updating the personal photos you have around your home.  You’ll bring fresh energy to your bonds with family and friends while reminding yourself of recent good times you’ve shared.

A healthy plant symbolizes the vitality of an important relationship. Photo copyright Ann Bingley Gallops.

• Energize new projects with a healthy young plant.  Its growth and vitality activates the “New Beginnings” associated with this season, and the hoped-for success of your projects.  One recent client was in the midst of healing her relationship with her daughter – a particularly apropos undertaking at this time of year.  Caring for the plant she bought to symbolize the rebirth of this relationship helped her cope and take the time she needed on her emotional journey.

• Declutter and organize the “New Beginnings” area of the Feng Shui Bagua (learn more about the Bagua here), which is in the center left-hand side of your space.  This is the location where we often start to clear clutter in Feng Shui, for the very reason that it symbolizes fresh starts.

• Feng Shui also applies to your outdoor spaces, so I recommend that you attend to the New Beginnings section of your garden as well. Here is more information about Garden Feng Shui. (Also, don’t forget to check out Seasonal Wisdom’s guest post for Open Spaces Feng Shui on three sensational spring flowers that celebrate this lovely season.)

Hope you’ve enjoyed these spring Feng Shui tips. I wish you the very best this season.  Here’s to good Chi!

About the Author:  Ann Bingley Gallops is a Feng Shui consultant and speaker in New York City.  Her company Open Spaces Feng Shui offers on-site and long-distance Feng Shui consultations, space-clearing and blessing ceremonies, and modern, practical Feng Shui design for homes and offices.

Ann practices Feng Shui with an MBA from Columbia University, a Practitioner’s Certificate from the Western School of Feng Shui, and Red Ribbon Professional membership in the International Feng Shui Guild.

Follow Ann on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, and on her blog, Feng Shui Tips & Insights.

See the other part of this blog exchange at Open Spaces Feng Shui, where Seasonal Wisdom celebrates spring with three favorite flowering plants.

Learn More: See Ann’s Feng Shui tips for Winter, created for Seasonal Wisdom readers.

Easter has long celebrated the rebirth of nature, as Spring splashes her seeds and flower buds around the garden at this time. Seasonal Wisdom takes a look at Easter folklore over the centuries, as well as vintage Easter cards from Riptheskull on Flickr.

In earlier centuries, Easter marked the time for folks to wear new clothes, clean the home, sweep out winter’s dust, tend the garden, and strew dirt floors with aromatic herbs for warmth, cushioning and natural pesticides.

Around the British Isles, there was a well-established belief that the sun danced for joy as it rose on Easter, wrote Ronald Hutton, a distinguished history professor at University of Bristol and author of several books on Britain’s ritual year.

Lots of basic facts about Easter — such as how the day is closely connected with the Spring equinox, and why eggs and bunnies are symbols of this holiday — can be found in this Seasonal Wisdom post.

Easter and the days right afterwards kicked off the spring fairs and festivities in past centuries. Depending on what day the holiday was celebrated that year, Easter often ushered in warm-weather activities like morris dancing, may poles, horse-raising and sporting events in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

An odd tradition around Easter was the custom of wishing success to one’s farm crops in a similiar way to “wassailing” apples around midwinter and the New Year. On Easter afternoon, farmers would wander around their corn or wheat fields with plum-cakes and cider, making toasts to the health of their plants. For example, farmers in Herefordshire, England were said to recite these words as they saluted their corn crops:

“Every step a leap, every leap a sheaf,

And God send the master a good harvest.”

During this beautiful time of the natural year — with new birth all around us — may you celebrate and enjoy this time in your own home.

To get you in the swing of things, check out my Sensational Spring Pinterest board. You’ll find everything from table decorating ideas to all-natural egg dyes.

Don’t forget to stop by Riptheskull on Flickr to see more cool vintage cards. Learn more historical facts about Easter.  And, however you decide to recognize this special time of year, be sure to take a minute to appreciate Mother Nature’s work.

“Well pleaseth me the sweet time of Easter

That maketh the leaf and the flower come out.”

Bertran de Born

Enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day on March 17 with these fun historical facts, gardening tips and old vintage greeting cards that reveal a bit about this popular Irish holiday. Come take a peek…

St. Patrick’s Day is an Irish holiday, dedicated to Ireland’s apostle, Patrick son of Clapurnis, who helped to usher in Christianity into Early Ireland.

Although Patrick lived c. 390-461, it wasn’t until nearly 700 AD that the Catholic saint “surpassed St. Brigid as a focus for devotion in Ireland,” reports the Oxford Book of Days.

St. Patrick enjoys many legends today. One of my favorites is how he got rid of all the snakes in Ireland, which is a pretty nifty miracle that I think would work well with mosquitoes in my backyard. The popular saint also explained the holy Trinity as a shamrock. These days, it’s no secret that shamrocks continue to be closely associated with Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day.

In fact, you’ll often find clover growing in your own spring garden around this time. Look for a four-leaf clover for good luck!

Today, the Irish holiday often feels more like an excuse to celebrate and over-indulge. This isn’t a new trend. St. Patrick’s Day has long been considered a good time for a cheerful feast:

“A jolly group of us drank our ‘Patrick’s Pot’ at the parish priests’s. … We had for dinner fresh cod’s head, salt ling softened by steeping, smoke-dried salmon and fresh trout, with fragrant cheese and green cabbage. We had sherry and port wine, whiskey and punch enough,” wrote Humphrey O’Sullivan in 1829.

In the garden, keep in mind these tips:

• Around St. Patrick’s Day is traditionally a good time to plant your peas in much of the country.
• Often, the forsythia is blooming now too. In many regions, that means it’s time to prune your roses.

If you’re lucky enough to live among horses, remember this old Irish proverb:

“On Saint Patrick’s day

Let all your horses play.”

And here’s a delightful Irish blessing for all Seasonal Wisdom readers:

“May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.”

Image Credit: All these lovely vintage cards came from the amazing riptheskull on Flickr.

This is the time of year when even city folks start to dream of a little garden of their own. After the winter months, these warmer days have long inspired weather proverbs, poems and superstitions, as you’ll see from these old garden tips from long ago.

Busy Time: Since the earliest times, March and April have been among the busiest months in the garden, as this 16th century poet explains:

“In March and in Aprill, from morning to night;

in sowing and setting good huswives delight.

To have in their garden, or some other plot:

to trim up their house and to furnish their pot.”

Five Hundredth Pointes of Good Husbandrie,

Thomas Tusser, 1559

Weather Proverbs: March’s fickle weather — sometimes freezing, other times idyllic — has long kept farmers and gardeners on their toes. Basically, if it’s cold in the beginning of the month, it’ll be warmer at the end.  As this old English weather proverb explains:

“If March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb,

If it comes in like a lamb, it goes out like a lion.”

Old Planting Tips: This 17th century gardening advice reveals the types of foods grown in early kitchen gardens in England, as well as the important role of the lunar cycle on planting schedules:

“In March, the Moon being new, sow Garlic, Chervil,

Marjoram, white Poppy, double Marigolds, Thyme and Violets.

At the full Moon, Chicory, Fennel, and Apples of Love.

At the wane, Artichokes, Basil, Cucumbers,

Spinach, Gillyflowers, Cabbage, Lettuce,

Burnets, Leeks and Savory.”

The English Housewife

Gervase Markham, 1683

Your Garden: Whatever you decide to grow this year, watch for more gardening, food and folklore information on these pages over the next few months. Stay tuned for more exciting giveaways coming soon!

Happy Valentine’s Day! From fun folklore to holiday food ideas, here are some great last-minute resources to make your Valentine’s Day special — all illustrated with vintage valentines from Riptheskull on Flickr.

Valentine’s Ideas: Homemade cookies and free valentine card printables are just some of the creative ideas you’ll find at my Be My Valentine Pinterest page.

Valentine’s Day Folklore and Traditions: What do flocks of birds, two obscure saints and the fourteenth-century writer Geoffrey Chaucer have to do with the Valentine’s traditions we celebrate today?

Find fun historical facts and folklore for Valentine’s Day in this Seasonal Wisdom post.

Valentines Dates: Looking for great date ideas for Valentine’s Day that won’t cost you an arm and a leg? These cheap ideas for dates will keep the romance flowing, and prove you don’t need a lot of money to have fun.

Valentines Gifts: With the clock ticking, you don’t have much time to buy your beloved a gift. Here are last-minute gifts to consider, from in-house massages to a personalized coupon books with special “favors.”

Valentine’s Meals: Looking for recipe ideas suitable for this romantic night? Here are some of the most popular Valentines Day recipes on Food.com.

Meanwhile, these aphrodisiacs have been eaten for centuries to stimulate romantic desire, according to Gourmet Sleuth, a gourmet food and cooking resource. See if they work for you.

However you decide to celebrate, here’s to a very happy Valentine’s Day for all!

All images were courtesy of Riptheskull on Flickr. Learn more about Valentines Day.

Looking Back: Spring began officially in the Northern Hemisphere with the spring equinox today. From this point forward, the days will grow longer than the nights until the summer solstice on June 21.

Cool trivia about the spring equinox:

• Some believe the spring equinox is when the days and nights are exactly the same length. That’s not exactly true, according to National Geographic.

• Easter and the spring equinox have more in common than you may think. Easter falls on the Sunday on or after the full moon that follows the Equinox. Many of Easter’s symbols (eggs and rabbits, for example) are spring fertility symbols that date back to pre-Christian times.

• The spring equinox is now considered the official start to spring. But in many traditional calendars, spring’s emergence was typically celebrated in early-February.

Today, we’re having one of those warm, sweetly scented days that illustrate why people get “spring fever.”

For those of you, who believe spring will never come. Consider these words from Henry Van Dyke:

“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between the two is sometimes as great as a month.”

Keep the faith, spring will arrive for you too.

Since the earliest times, spring and the renewal of life after winter have been celebrated around Easter. Most people know Easter as a Christian holiday that marks the resurrection of Jesus.

But here are Easter facts you might not know:

Ancient Links: Venerable Bede (circa 672-735) believed Easter was derived from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. This ancient goddess was called many names, including Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eastur and Austron.

Some scholars – particularly the British historian Ronald Hutton – aren’t completely convinced that Bede’s evidence conclusively links Easter with this goddess and a pre-Christian festival. But some facts appear certain: April was called Estor-monath (or something similar) in Germanic languages around Bede’s time. And the Anglo-Saxon word eastre is linked to several Indo-European words signifying dawn.

In other words, new beginnings have been celebrated around this day for a very long time.

Spring Equinox: Easter is held on the first Sunday – after the first full moon – after the spring equinox. If Easter Sunday falls on the full moon, the holiday is postponed until the following Sunday. That means Easter can occur any time March 22 to April 25. The sequence is so complicated that it takes 5.7 million years to repeat.

Time for the New: Want good luck for the year? Then wear something new on Easter. Otherwise, you’ll be sorry, according to this old proverb:

“At Easter, let your clothes be new;
Or else be sure you will it rue.”

Easter Bunny: It has long been said that fertile folks can “breed like rabbits.” No wonder many ancient cultures associated rabbits and hares with fertility, regeneration and spring. Old folklore believed rabbits cured sterility or difficult pregnancies. Even now it’s considered good luck to carry a rabbit’s foot. Perhaps the only ones who don’t consider rabbits a lucky symbol are the gardeners who have seen their flowers and vegetables devoured by the furry critters.

Immigrating Germans brought the Easter bunny to the United States. But the tradition wasn’t widely adopted in this country until after the Civil War.

Easter Eggs: It’s hard to imagine Easter without eggs. Yet, this tradition has roots that extend back to the earliest known civilizations. In fact, eggs represented rebirth and fertility to many ancient cultures.

As Ronald Hutton writes in Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, “The bird’s egg has always been one of the most ubiquitous human symbols of new life in general and of spring in particular.” Ancient Greeks, Persians, Egyptians and Romans exchanged eggs during spring festivals.

In 1290, the household of British King Edward I purchased and decorated 450 eggs in gold leaf to distribute among his royal entourage. By the 1600s, Germans were exchanging decorated eggs at Easter – especially among young lovers. In Central and Eastern Europe, egg decoration has become a true art form. Ukrainian Easter eggs – called “pysanka” – are especially popular. Learn more from the Ukrainian Museum.

And who can forget the fabulous Faberge eggs created for the Russian Tzars? Diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires adorned these exquisite eggs that often depicted important moments in Russian history.

Green Easter: Looking for ways to celebrate Easter in a more earth friendly way? Then hop on over to Huffington Post for lots of green ways to celebrate this spring holiday.

Images Credit: The lovely vintage Easter cards illustrating this post came from an amazing collection belonging to riptheskull on flickr.com.