Strawberry Solstice

The summer solstice was yesterday, coinciding with the full moon. This hasn't happened since 1967, and won't happen again until 2062. I had no idea they were so rare.

http://yourtake.9news.com/media/20911710

So today marks the first full day of summer, though it's felt like it for the last week or so with temperatures in the nineties. I have a love/hate relationship with summer. Love the long days, green growth everywhere, lingering dawns and sunsets, Hate the oppressive heat, the blistering sun, the sad shift in the landscape from green growth to dry yellow straw.

Though I do have to admit it's a glorious moment when I walk out of my meat locker of an office into the heat of the day.

June is the Strawberry Moon, as now is the month that strawberries are producing. My patch is doing really well! I've taken a few every day for the last week or so, along with a few handfuls of spinach from the veggie patch for an awesome little salad. I love getting meals out of my garden.

Strawberry Moon is also known as Rose Moon, Honey Moon, Lotus Moon, Green Corn Moon, Planting Moon, Horse Moon. Following the moon's cycles is probably the oldest means of marking the passage of time we know, and a lunar calendar is still used in many places.

It's remarkable how accurately we've managed to break down the turning of the year by just watching the moon and the sun. They are gods and goddesses in most ancient traditions: Sol, Apollo, Sunni, Mani, Selene, Artemis.

Why not? Without them, we wouldn't exist.