Beltane                                                       Healing Moon

The wonderful circular calendar I have, the one which shows the amount of daylight with a large yellow ovoid, has that yellow closest to the calendar’s inner rim on Sunday. That means the Summer Solstice. On that day we will have been in Colorado for 6 months, having moved in on the Winter Solstice. Also on that day, for lovers of the night like me, we can celebrate the gradual withdrawal of the sun, shown in the increasing white around the yellow as the circular calendar moves toward the 2015 Winter Solstice.

The numbers that move from the center of the yellow to the circular margin represent hours, 1 thru 17. This is, of course, a temperate latitude phenomenon, so living north or south of the equator by some way is necessary to experience the changes. They will be less dramatic here on Shadow Mountain, at 39.5211° N, than at Andover, 45.2333° N, but still quite evident.

The coming of Midsummer shows itself here each evening as I go to bed. Our bedroom window faces north and at 9:00 pm, my current bedtime, the sky is a fuschia color through the ponderosa pines.

Here’s an image from Swedish Midsommar: