Although it won’t be full until next week, the Moon will put on a dramatic show at the end of this week, rising just as the Sun is setting, while making its way to its fourth and final Full phase of the Spring.
The June Full Moon is known as the Strawberry Moon, because this is the season when the woodland strawberries start to ripen.
Strawberries are an ancient fruit and were singled out in Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” when he described what the Greeks called the golden age of humanity, the first of the great ages when there was no need of armed men and human beings lived in harmony with the gods and all that had been created.
Centuries passed before garden strawberries were first bred, in France in the 1750s, and today, international strawberry cultivation exceeds nine million tons per year, though not all of those strawberries ripen under the Strawberry Moon.
So as you wait on the delicious strawberry harvest, follow the Moon this week, a waxing gibbous as it rises later and later each the day, until it rivals the Sun Saturday evening, rising in the east about an hour and a half before the Sun sets in the west. It may look reddish while its on the horizon (because of our own atmosphere), if we’re lucky!
And check out Andrew Lang’s fairy tale of “The Three Dwarfs”, which offers up a wicked stepmother, her ugly daughter, a virtuous maiden, and a king. See, while the father isn’t paying attention, his daughter is sent by her stepmother into the wild to fetch a basket of strawberries, though the ground is covered with snow. She happens upon the hut of three dwarfs and proves so resourceful to them that they grant her great beauty, a happy marriage, and gold. Oh, and the strawberries! She fulfills her step-mother’s task by finding the strawberries, which also secures her happily ever after.
The Three Dwarfs from Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book