Slow down in June? Not these days
June is here, and with its arrival comes the annual urge to slow down a bit. In earlier times, that might have meant sipping lemonade and drowsing in the shade.
Nowadays, we tend to engage in less-sedentary activities, such as vacations, picnics, going swimming and attending family reunions.
The name of the June moon is one of the year’s most romantic, ranking up there with the harvest moon in the fall. This month’s moon is the strawberry moon, a lovely name used over the years in both poetry and song.
The summer solstice, the beginning of summer, will come to us at 6:51 a.m. on June 21. I know it’s hard to believe, but that date marks the farthest north the sun will travel from the equator. Then it will pause, turn around and head back south again.
That means the length of daylight will be slowly decreasing.
Hal Borland’s book Twelve Moons of the Year says June’s moon also can be called the hot moon because now comes the first heat of summer, the first cutting of hay and the first garden harvest. Sometimes now, we cut hay in May.
June is also the traditional month for weddings. The Old Farmer’s Almanac tells us that “the custom dates back more than 2,000 years to when the ancient Romans named the month after the goddess of marriage and childbirth — Juno.”
It was thought that happiness and prosperity would come to those who wed during Juno’s month.
A wildflower that I consider among the most beautiful blooms during this transitional period between late spring and summer. The blue flag iris, also called the northern iris, blooms in wetlands or by rivers and lakes. It likes to have its feet wet.
It looks very much like the irises in our gardens, but it is truly a wildflower. If you see blue irises, it means they are native flowers. If they are yellow, they are not native even if growing in the wild. Yellow irises, common now, were a European garden import that escaped into the wild.
The field guide Wildflowers of Ohio, by Stan Tekiela, says the word iris is derived from the Greek word for rainbow because of the variety of colors the flowers come in.
Our beautiful native wild irises come in only one color — blue — and can be considered both a spring and summer wildflower.
Retired weather columnist John Switzer writes a Sunday Metro column.