In Praise of the Elder Mother

The Elderberry bush is starting to bloom. There are clusters of tiny, ivory-colored florets dotting its voluminous dark green surface.






Friday the 13th is a good day to pay a tribute to the Elder Mother, since both the day and the bush represent ancient earth powers which have been made malevolent for reasons too deep to speculate on here.

Friday is "Frigga's Day," the Teutonic goddess of love, marriage, and fertility. And 13 is not an unlucky number in the old reckoning of goddesses, since there are 13 moon cycles in one journey round the sun -- each 28 day moon cycle evoking the normal menstrual cycle, also, of course, closely linked to fertility.

The lore surrounding the Elderberry bush seems to come mostly from Europe, where peasants were careful not to arouse the ire of the rather cranky Elder Mother by clipping her branches without a really good explanation. In a well tended hedgerow, Elderberry bushes were allowed to sprawl, and were considered places of mystery -- an opening to other dimensions. If you fell asleep under an Elderberry bush on Mid-summer's night you might well see faeries and elves celebrating.

And the most powerful and dangerous wand in the Harry Potter saga is the Elder Wand, made from a branch of the Elderberry.

Personally, I prefer a practical, modern approach and look upon the attractive shrub in our backyard as the Western Blue Elderberry, Sambucus cerulea, with beautiful flowers and dark blue berries that draw the birds. I have no intention of falling asleep under there, especially since C. is fond of that spot for his doggie ablutions.

However, I do let it grow unchecked, and I do find it very interesting that the rising sun of the summer solstice hits the fence right where the Elderberry bush opens its curved branches, forming an entrance to the mysterious green cave of light underneath.

The Solstice Eclipse

Despite the gloomy weather, Bay Area skywatchers and mere curiosity seekers like myself are tracking tonight's total lunar eclipse. It is a very rare event because it falls on the same day as the northern winter solstice -- the moment at which the Earth's north axis is tilted farthest from the sun, giving us our shortest day and longest night of the year, and heralding the first day of winter. According to NASA Science News, there's only been one other lunar eclipse on the northern winter solstice in the last 2,000 years . . . and that one was back in 1638.

According to information from Oakland's Chabot Space & Science Center, the eclipse begins -- or began, because it's underway now -- when the Earth's shadow starts to slide across the full moon at 9:30 p.m. Monday night, December 20 (tonight). Complete coverage -- known to astronomers as "totality" -- lasts from 11:40 p.m. until 12:53 a.m. on Tuesday, December 21, and the eclipse should be over by 2:00 a.m.

The photo above was taken at 10:40 p.m. from our backyard. The splendid full moon of the solstice can been seen through a thin veiling of fog. It looks like the Christmas star, but don't try to follow it!






I took this follow-up photo at 11:50 p.m., ten minutes past "totality." What I saw -- or thought I saw -- and tried to get a picture of was the last tiny fingernail clipping of light disappearing behind a thicker layer of fog. I don't know why it was still visible at that point in the process. When I enhanced the photo there was indeed a small pale smudge in the center, but I couldn't get the enhanced photo to upload. There are far better photos and videos of the whole event all over the internet; nonetheless, it's nice to keep a personal vantage point on the cosmos from one's own backyard.

Besides tracking the eclipse, I also marked the solstice by hanging the first section of this marvelous calendar which provides a beautiful wall poster for each quartile of the natural year: winter solstice to spring equinox, spring equinox to summer solstice, summer solstice to fall equinox, and fall equinox to winter solstice.

The reddish circle on the left edge is the solstice lunar eclipse, which marks the beginning of another cycle of light in our journey round the sun.

Note about the calendar: The link goes to the 2010 calendar at Amazon but I know the 2011 version is available. I bought mine at Whole Foods.

Note about the time stamp: Blogger has an interesting habit of marking the time the first draft of a post is saved. I started this post earlier in the evening and saved the draft, worked on it some more later and didn't actually publish until a few days afterwards. But the date and time stamps show the time of the first draft.

Summer Solstice

This photo was taken the morning of the summer solstice, around six a.m. It shows the place on the fence where the rising sun hit, right at the base of the elderberry bush. I guess this is our backyard equivalent of the heel stone at Stonehenge. No revels, here, though, just a quiet sense of honoring the rhythms of time and the paths of light.

Mr. and Mrs. Zuc

Two glorious zucchini blossoms opened at the same time on the same plant on the morning of June 14, a week ago today. The male, pollen-bearing flower is on the left; the female, fruiting flower is on the right.

Close as these blooms are to each other, it still takes a bee to seal the deal and make the magic happen. The pollen has to be brought directly to the large pistil at the center of the female flower (the part that looks remarkably like a bright yellow low-energy use light bulb).

The bee, of course, has no interest in being a zucchini fertility clinic worker; it just wants nectar and pollen for its own hive. But the flower-insect co-evolution contract is set up so that mutual benefit accrues to all involved -- including us!






Seven days after their grand opening both blossoms are shriveled little rags, but in their place is the fine young zucchini pictured above, ready to be harvested on the summer solstice.






Just for contrast, here is a photo of an un-pollinated zucchini, eight days after its attached blossom opened on June 13, all by itself with no other blossoms around. I always used to wonder why some zucchini would be so stunted and simply wither on the plant. Now I know you need both Mr. and Mrs. Zuc to get viable offspring.

For the record: Last year the first zucchini harvest was on June 14, so we are running about a week behind. I don't have a planting-out date for this year because all kinds of things got so busy in May but I think the seedlings got put in later than last year's May 10. Of course, the varieties are different as well (Green Racer last year, Green Bush this year) so perhaps meaningful comparisons are not possible. At any rate, another zucchini season has begun. Hooray!

The Turning of the Year

The backyard at dawn on New Year's morning: a lone crow flies north against the pink and blue sky, a waning crescent moon hangs like a forgotten Christmas ornament. The winter garden is a bedraggled assortment of blackened vines left over from summer and a few fecund patches of greens that have been producing daily salads and vegetable side dishes for weeks on end. The blackened vines are still hosting a few wizened tomatoes that have made it through the heavy frosts.

We also have some pale tomatoes ripening artistically on a plate on the dining room table, and a pile of scraggly branches stashed in the garage with some green globes still clinging. Last year we had tomatoes for Christmas and for New Year's. This year we may well have tomatoes for Valentine's Day! (Probably not.)

No dramatic seasonal changes in these parts -- always something dying, something sprouting, something ready to harvest. You have to look close to see the small shifts that mark the turning of the year.

Today we throw out the old calendars and the boxes of our days will be presided over by new themes -- Japanese prints this year rather than dramatic photos of Yosemite (last year's gift from a friend superceded by this year's gift from a different friend). Like millions of others, I quietly decide to start afresh, turn a new page, in some small area of life. This blog, for instance -- a place to write down the little revelations of the day in order to see them more clearly and see more of them.

In the garden the year turned about ten days ago -- the earth began tilting back toward the sun, lengthening the solar path across the heavens. The season of light. Actually, the season of the return of light. Cause for celebration since ancient days.

And always room for new beginnings in these endless turnings.