FULL COLD MOON KISS TONIGHT! The December full moon is also known as "the long nights moon" and sometimes, "the moon before Yule." This year is special, the cold moon will end the year with a "planetary kiss" between Saturn and Venus (they will appear closer in the night sky - less than 2 degrees apart). At my house this hanky-panky will occur 12 minutes after midnight.
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"And the stripes of the woolly bear caterpillar vary from one individual to another, year by year." - Hal Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year
Thankful for the Guardian publication of this! PROTECT RESTORE FUND
Now it is summer by the almanac. Summer came with the solstice this morning, when, to give "solstice" its literal meaning, the sun stood still. It was turning the corner of the seasons, and now it begins to move south again, as we say, toward fall and winter.
We are at the time of the longest daylight, earliest sunrise and latest sunset, which will continue with only a few seconds of change for another week. Time, if we would only pause and let it flow over us, for a little while partakes of the deliberation that is the mark of summer in almost everything except human affairs. Spring has its own haste. Spring is sprouting and burgeoning, the opening of the leaf and the blossom. It is mating and birthing, the hatching of the egg, the spreading wing, the urgency of the bee and the wasp, the surge of green across the earth. Then the first rush is over, the trees are vast canopies of chlorophyll, the meadows tall with grass, the fields thick-bladed with corn and oats. June matures into summer, and the quiet process of growth for which April and May were a time of preparation. Summer becomes a summary of spring's achievement, a totaling of sun and rain and fertile soil added to the substance of the seed and the root. The urgency of spring is past. The berries ripen in their own time. The bees replenish the hive. Clover comes to sweet blossom, then to seed. Daisies whiten the roadsides. Fireflies sparkle in the evenings. Time flows like the brooks that must have leisured through Eden when summer blessed a young and innocent earth. Hal Borland in Just...
e.e.cummings in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it's spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee Juncos daily at the feeder. Juncos vary in appearance across North America and are ground birds, hoppers, of the sparrow family.
January Wind "The January wind has a hundred voices. It can scream, it can bellow, it can whisper, and it can sing a lullaby. It can roar through the leafless oaks and shout down the hillside, and it can murmur in the white pines rooted among the granite ledges where lichen makes strange hieroglyphics. It can whistle down a chimney and set the hearth to dancing. On a sunny day it can rattle the sash and stay there muttering of ice and snowbanks and deep-frozen ponds. Sometimes the January wind seems to come from the farthest star in the outer darkness, so remote and so impersonal is its voice. That is the wind of a January dawn, in the half-light that trembles between day and night. It is a wind that quivers the trees, its force sensed but not seen, a force that might almost hold back the day if it were so directed. Then the east brightens, and the wind relaxes -- the stars, it source, grown dim." - Hal Borland |
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A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
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Book Of Centuries
Book Of Firsts
Church Year
Commonplace
Copywork
Enquire Within
Fortitude Journal
Gratitude Journal
Keeping
Music Notebook
Nature Notebook
Notebooks
Picture File
Poetry
Prayer Journal
Recipes
Zeitgeist