The 2026 edition of Mother’s Day falls on May 10, six days from today (with “today” being May 4, 2026, the date of publication of the instant article). Back in 2021, I published a research article on Anna Jarvis and the early twentieth-century origins of Mother’s Day, with links to contemporaneous newspaper articles and reports documenting the ultimately successful Mother’s Day movement. I humbly recommend it as Mother’s Day-week reading, both for the history and for recalling the original concept behind the occasion. But while I had published a lengthy Mother’s Day history article, I had not yet covered Mother’s Day holiday decorations — a sad short-coming given how many Brooklyn holiday decorations I have documented in these pages. One reason for this hole in our archive was that few people where I typicall walk in Brooklyn put out Mother’s Day decorations.
But there is another reason that I cannot so easily explain away. On May 5, 2025, I photographed an inflatable Mother’s Day bouquet decoration outside a home on Hicks Street in Cobble Hill, right on the neighborhood border with Carroll Gardens. This home is a proverbial regular in these pages for its holiday decorations, having contributed items for Fourth of July, Easter, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, summer, back to school, autumn, and possibly more I am not remembering off the top of my head. Unfortunately, Mother’s Day came and went on May 11, 2025, and I had forgotten to publish my article in advance. Instead of publishing late, I decided to save the photo for 2026.
As advertised, we have an inflatable Mother’s Day flower pot with three flowers: Pink, purple, and yellow. Now that I have published my article one year late for Mother’s Day 2025, but just in time for 2026, I consider my monthly public service announcement obligation to be complete. To all the surely many mothers out there who read The New Leaf Journal, I send my early happy Mother’s Day wishes.
