Why Knot Plant a Knot Garden?

 With my new book MUMMIES EXPOSED! arriving on May 7, it's been a busy time . It's spring, after all, and I need to get outside to clean up after Old Man Winter and get ready to plant flowers.

 I'll get you a mummy activity come fall. In the meantime, how about planting a flower-and-herb version of an Elizabethan knot garden?

Like Elizabeth Tudor, England's Queen Elizabeth I?  Of course you can. Why Knot?

There's an excellent example of a knot garden here in the U.S. at the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There, head gardener Jeff Lewis cares for the twining shrubs that look like knots, and he plants the spaces in between them with herbs in spring.

Jeff shared a wonderful photo of this garden in early spring, when it’s easy to see “the bones” of the garden before lush green herbs take over in summer. Go on over to their website at http://elizabethangardens.org/

It takes years to establish a knot garden like this one, but you can create an updated version to grow in just one summer. All it takes is a bit of space, bedding plants, a digging tool, fertilizer, and regular watering.  
Here's a waterwise example from the Cooperative Extension website: https://articles.extension.org/pages/61669/water-wise-knot-gardens

 From Elizabeth I: the People's Queen comes this activity. It's knot a problem, I promise!

Photo credit: Double Down Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Make Merry with an Elizabethan Dance

In December 1599, all was aflutter at the court of Elizabeth I, the queen of England. The queen looked forward to a quiet Christmas Day, followed by a dozen days of merrymaking with the lords and ladies who wintered with her at Whitehall Palace on the Thames River. In these dark days of December and January, when there were only eight hours of daylight, everyone liked to party.

Elizabeth Tudor adored dancing.  Even at age 66, when her light-footed ways were a memory, the queen was known to beat time on the floor with her cane as her courtiers danced.

The pavane, an Italian import, was in high favor.  Because the ladies wore stiff undergarments, they couldn’t bend and sway very easily to the music, but still they followed the series of steps that comprised this courtly dance and even managed to clear the floor at times.  (Back in 1971, Dr. Paul B. Cares, my history professor at Allegheny College, claimed that a gentleman literally grabbed his lady by her farthingale and hoisted her upward. Aparently he spoke truth, because a web search shows Elizabeth herself elevated by her admirer Robert Dudley.)  

We are fortunate that the Library of Congress offers online examples of Elizabethan dances, including the pavane. To learn the steps, visit http://1.usa.gov/1c87wkx.  

From Elizabeth I, the People’s Queen comes this activity. 

You can download the tune at 

http://bit.ly/1diDWWf/. Try CPDL #10696 for a good tempo, and give it a whirl!

Thanking a Teacher and Flying a Banner

Ruth Ann Siegler welcomes former student Bethany Hauser Clawson home from Afghanistan

People come and go throughout our lives, but I find that teachers have a special place in mine.  I'm dedicating this post to Ruth Ann Siegler, a wonderful art teacher who is retiring from Blue Ash Elementary School here in southwest Ohio after 36(?) years of working with children.

It’s Halloween…Time to Carve Your Turnips!

I love Halloween -- not so much the candy and costumes (though I’m grateful for those tiny Snickers bars) as for the folklore and centuries-old practices from the British Isles that took place this time of year. When my daughter took up Irish dancing and got us involved in all things Celtic, I started digging deeper into the celebration of Samhain (pronounced “sow-ren), when the Celtic year ended and a new one began.