Full moon in June means it’s time to pick strawberries
It feels cruel to point this out while the majority of the country glories in a heatwave, but the nights have officially started drawing in. Sorry.
That’s not to say more hours of darkness are necessarily a bad thing, of course. Warm nights mean there’s no excuse not to look up at the stars – assuming you can stay awake – and there’s a treat on the way.
This coming Thursday, my fellow night owls should see the sunlight give way to a bright strawberry moon.
June’s full moon, normally the closest to solstice, goes under many guises. I’ve always thought strawberry moon sounded more like a bar or a jazz funk album (which it is, by Grover Washington Jr), but the moniker was in fact coined centuries ago by the indigenous Algonquin people of North America who believed it marked the start of strawberry-picking season.
How long ago that feels, before our dutiful supermarkets started selling £2 punnets of the things perennially.
Strawberry Moon stuck, once the Farmers’ Almanac began to publish American Indian full moon names at the turn of the 20th century, but some might call it by another name entirely. Rose moon is one, while to our friends Down Under – who never shy from calling a spade a shovel – it’s the long night moon, appearing as it does in their bleak midwinter.
To many Europeans, though, it’s simply the hay moon. And that seems especially appropriate this year. The old saying about sunshine and haymaking is true, and with temperatures nudging toward 86F (30C) over the next fortnight, expect farmers to deposit blobs of black plastic-covered bales all over the more bucolic areas of the countryside.
For now, the agricultural will be pleased with the heavens. That may change if there’s no rain until August, but they can take solace by looking at that same lunar calendar. The Thunder Moon will be upon us next.