It’s May Day! Thank your teachers.

When I was a little girl in Collingswood NJ, my father had me visit his old teacher, Ms. Tobin, who lived down the street from my beloved childhood home on May 1st.  He taught us that May Day was a day to celebrate flowers and love and thanking someone special, and especially teachers, in your life.

Gardening in New Jersey, c. 1999 all rights: Pegeen.com

Gardenia Bushes - Florida c. 2009 All rights: Pegeen.com

We would go into my father’s garden gathering up Delphinium, Peony and Violets and make a Construction Paper cone.  We would fill the cone to the brim and run to Ms. Tobin’s down the street, ring the door bell and run fast away.  It always made me feel so giggly and of course, I passed on this tradition to my children.  So, today, with one son away in a trip to the Carolinas and another strapping football player going to practice I have the task of getting flowers for their teachers today (in the ball player’s case – the coaches wife) so that they too can remember their teachers in our family tradition.

My father also made me MAD for gardening.  I was lucky to have purchased a rambling old Tudor Home in NJ back in the mid 1990’s and my husband and I had much fun renovating and restoring the acre of gardens.  We used to stop traffic on Route 46 in Mine Hill it was often said and most of the photography for Pegeen.com was done there in our gardens.  I heard it was plowed down by the idiots that bought the place from me (they also painted over huge murals I  had painted to make the boy’s rooms look like Harry Potter, but that’s another story). They had NO IDEA of the hundreds of thousands of seedlings I grew and also purchased from Graceful Gardens (terrific place by the way) so I was THRILLED when I heard they moved – amen.  Now I hear the gardens are once again being restored and am so inclined to re-visit them on a trip up north.  Gardening in Florida is not as fun – everything grows TOO MUCH.  (Witness the Gardenia Bushes surrounding my house).  But, I still try and each spring, I bring in bulbs like parrot Tulips to remind me of the Peony bushes I miss so much.

And, I remember: all the wonderful teachers in my life and my children’s life – who meant the world to me.

Thank you to all teachers.

Tags: gardening, Pegeen.com, teachers