Beltane A History

a Beltane fire🔥

Beltane is the Celtic May Day festival that we celebrate. Most commonly it is held on 1 May, or about halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. The Beltane festival marks the beginning of summer, and celebrates the fertility of the coming year. Homes and cattle were decorated with yellow May flowers.

Fire plays an important role in the Beltane festivities in history flames, smoke, and ashes from bonfires kindled during the festival were thought to have protective powers. All household fires would be put out and then re-lit from the Beltane bonfire.

a may queen

Down through the centuries May Day has been associated with fun, revelry and perhaps most important of all, fertility. The Day would be marked with village folk cavorting round the maypole (which sounds like fun), the selection of the May Queen and the dancing figure of the Jack-in-the-Green at the head of the procession. The Jack is thought to be a relic from those enlightened days when our ancient ancestors worshipped trees.

In the sixteenth century riots followed when May Day celebrations were banned. Fourteen rioters were hanged, and Henry VIII is said to have pardoned a further 400 who had been sentenced to death (that's a lot of people).

The May Day festivities almost completely vanished following the Civil War when Oliver Cromwell took control of the country in 1645. Describing maypole dancing as superstition and wickedness, a legislation was passed which saw the end of village maypoles throughout the country.

Dancing did not return to the village greens until the restoration of Charles II. who helped ensure the support of his subjects with the erection of a massive 40 metre high maypole in London’s Strand that's super tall. This pole signalled the return of the fun times, and remained standing for almost fifty years. that's mainly it other than there are some different types of food that

🐝Gardening To Help Bees & Butterflies 🦋

Our gardens are important to wildlife such as butterflies and bees because of the different plants they contain it doesn't matter if your garden is a mess because in winter . if you grow a good mix of flowers and bushes and shrub plants in your garden, you can provide a tone of nectar and pollen for all of the bees

Bees like many types of different flowers here is a list of ten

1. Hellebore 
2. Bluebell
3.  Bugle 
4. Crab apple
5.  Crocus 
6. Flowering cherry
7.  Forget-me-not 
8. Hawthorn
9.  Primrose
10.  Pulmonary

fox glove is a good one for bees as well because there are a tone of flowers on the plants but dont touch the plant without gloves or somthing as all of it can cause allergic reactions, but the berries are particularly poisonous so don't eat them. Here are ten flowers that butterflies like the most

1. Hebe
2. Lavender
3. Cornflowers
4. Fennel
5. knapweed
6. marjoram
7. Sedum
8. Verbena
9. valerian
10. buddleja

Buddleja is actually one of the best known nectar flowers for adult butterflies, it produces blooms over a number of weeks between summer and autumn. Also hebes are great too, as well as being a reliable evergreen shrub, hebes attracts a range of insects bees and butterflies in particular. I would sugest planting some of the flowers as it will help nature and it looks pretty.

Also we cant forget moths not all of them eat cloths.
Night-scented plants are particularly good for moths, and actually evolved their night-time perfume to attract moths to pollinate their flowers. here are ten flowers that moths love to eat

1.  Jasmine
2.  Honeysuckle
3.  Evening Primrose
4.  Sweet Rocket 
5.  Night-scented Stock
6. Ivy
7. Michaelmas daisy
8. Sedum spectabile
9. dandelions
10. pale petunias

Don't be to tidy with your garden because while most moths breed in grass the lava spend winter hidden in the leaf  litter and plant debris so don't tidy up your garden until late spring. also leave some weeds in your garden as at the beginning of spring bees practically don't have any flowers other than dandelions to eat. It dosen't matter if you havent got a garden you could just get a window box and plant a tone of nectar filled flower