The other night, I went for a walk to enjoy the last moon of spring, the
last moon of Wabun, the Golden Eagle.
This be the Corn Planting Moon.
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the days right now are long, fourteen
hours and thirty-seven minutes long, to be exact. By the end of this moon, on June 20th,
the day will be ten minutes longer, the longest days of the year, clocking in
at fourteen hours and forty-seven minutes, the summer solstice.
According to the Wheel, people born under these spring moons are full of wonder
and curiosity. They are awake. They are spontaneous and creative and, like
Wabun himself, they are able to soar high, see clear and see far. Wabun’s children are, by nature, explorers, hunters,
scouts, trailblazers, navigators, pilots and cosmonauts.
THE THIRD AND FINAL MOON OF SPRING
The Wheel always moves forward…but to what?
Usually, it’s about food. The
trees and plants have mostly flowered and budded and leafed and they are now
beginning to fruit. This is food,
whether it comes in the form of flowers, stems, buds, roots, bark, leaves,
fruit or pollen.
The wild dinner bell is ringing.
The new growth of spring rings that bell.
On the farm, this is the time when new lambs and piglets wean off the
milk and taste, for the first time, green food.
In the forests, wild berries are just about to burst, the perfect food
for bears. In the woods, the beaver family
swims out of the lodge and chomps down the weak new trees to repair the winter
damage to their dams. On the plains, the grass is growing high and
that provides a cover for the rabbits and mice as they dart across the fields
and lawns, looking for food, hiding from hawks and owls. Bats are born in May and June, just in time
to catch the bees and insects hunting for pollen in the roses and peonies and
sunflowers. Down by the sea, the blue
crab molts under the first full moon of May and becomes soft-shelled. The seagulls and pelicans have been waiting.
And for us? This third moon of spring
is salad: lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, baby turnips, baby beets, spring onions, green garlic, the radish,
the rainbow chard and the spinach.
Eat up…but don’t forget to plant the corn.
This is the Corn Planting Moon.
This moon actually has many different names.
It’s sometimes called the Strawberry Moon. If you take a visit to any local farmers’
market, it’s easy to see why.
It’s also called the Rose Moon. I
like to do my rose-hunting by night.
But I prefer to call it the Corn Planting Moon. Here on Turtle Island, it’s hard to think of
a plant more important than corn, our native grass, the maize, the food of the
ancient Wheelmakers themselves.
I’ll wait for summer to talk about the corn.
It’s the moon that fascinates me now.
This one is for Wabun’s children: the pioneers. These curious pilots? Sometimes, they bring back trees.
