The Green Corn Moon

It's my favorite time of month once again - the time of the full moon.

For the last couple of nights, I've been out walking in the garden at night and looking up at the growing moon.  It never fails to astonish me just how lovely it is and how lovely it makes everything here below appear in its soft white light.  In the moonlight, even my parched garden looks lush as the leaves bask in an altogether friendly light that does not burn and dry.

This month's moon is really the first of three "harvest moons."  In some areas of the country, harvest is under way in August.  The traditional name for this month's full moon is the Green Corn Moon or the Grain Moon, in recognition of the beginning of the grain harvest.  Some Native American tribes, those living around the Great Lakes and along the great rivers, had another name for it - the Sturgeon Moon.  This was the month when that giant fish was most easily caught.

But whatever name it is known by, the full moon marks the passage of time.  That seems especially poignant and bittersweet to me since I marked my birthday just a few days ago.  How many of these Sturgeon/Grain/Green Corns Moons have I looked upon?  I'm not telling!  More than I care to count.

Each full moon marks another step through the year and through the seasons.  We'll have one more full moon in summer and then we'll be marking the autumnal equinox.  We can only hope that by then this terrible summer of weather will be in our rear view mirror, but there are no guarantees.  Sometimes our summers pay no attention to the calendar and extend right into October.  The way things have gone this year, I would fully expect this to be one of those years when that happens.

But never mind that now.  The sun has dipped below the horizon and in a little while the Green Corn Moon will be rising.  Even though the corn harvest in Texas this year has been mostly nonexistent, under the light of the moon tonight, we can forget all that for a little while.  Forget the drought and the heat and the crop failures.  Forget the inevitable birthdays.  Look up and smile and for a while, just enjoy BEING.