catbird – Page 17 – Wineberry Woods

23Jul 2023 by catbird

Strawberry Moon Cake

Full Moon, Recipes, Strawberry Moon, Summer

In many places June is the transition into summer. In much of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, it’s high strawberry season, and this traditional name is shared among the Dakota, Chippewa, and Ojibwe peoples. Similarly, the Haida call this the Berries Ripen Moon, the Lakota refer to the When Berries Are Good Moon, and the Mohawk have Ripening Time Moon. For many, this is the start of summer abundance. Picking and eating strawberries is the perfect way to celebrate! Strawberry, Rose & Mint Garden Cake I recently learned that garden centers in the UK often have cafes and serve cake and tea and it kind of blew my mind. There seems to be a general association between cake and gardens there that just doesn't exist in the US– but I fully…

23Jul 2023 by catbird

Flower Moon Dried Flower Art

Craft Project, Flower Moon, Nature Art, Nature Collection, Spring

In my part of the world, May is the height of spring and flowers are starting to bloom in earnest. A fun and easy way to celebrate the Flower Moon is by making some dried flower artwork. We used flowers that we had pressed last summer for this project, but you could also collect spring flowers that are blooming now and press them under some heavy books for a week or so. Materials: dried pressed flowers heavy paper (like watercolor paper or cardstock) glue Method: Cut out your paper in a circle shape, trace a plate or other round object to help you get a perfect circle. Arrange the flowers until you like the way they look. Try experimenting with radial symmetry, which mean that there is symmetry around a central…

23Jul 2023 by catbird

Pink Moon Petal Hunt

Craft Project, Full Moon, Nature Art, Nature Collection, Pink Moon, Play, Spring

A great way to celebrate the Pink Moon is to go on a "pink" scavenger hunt and see how many bits of pink you can find creeping out after the winter. You may find some pink flowers, but pink is also in other unexpected places like leaves, sticks, and even insects! How many types of pink things can you find? Pink Moon Scavenger Hunt There are no checklists for this hunt, just look for things that are pink! They can be natural things like petals and leaves or anything else that's pink and catches your eye. You can take photos to keep track or physically collect some items. (Take care with natural items, plants are just starting over for the year so it's best to stick with things that have…

22Jul 2023 by catbird

The Falling Leaves Moon & Lantern

Autumn, Craft Project, Falling Leaves Moon, Full Moon, Nature Art, Nature Collection

The October full moon is most often called the Hunter’s Moon in popular moon-name lingo. This name was cited in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1710 and is almost certainly European in origin. It is believed that this full moon came to be called the Hunter’s Moon because October was the time to go hunting to store up food for the cold winter ahead. Still, this name doesn’t resonate with me at all. In contrast, the Falling Leaves Moon is an Anishinaabe term referring to the seasonal changes in much of North America this time of year. The Abenaki call this moon the Leaf Falling Moon, the Arapaho use the Falling Leaves Moon, and the Lakota name is the poetic When the Wind Shakes Off the Leaves Moon. The Cree term…

22Jul 2023 by catbird

Green Corn Moon Microgreens

Craft Project, Full Moon, Garden, Green Corn Moon, Nature Art

“Green corn” is not corn that is the color green (although that’s a thing too), but simply sweet corn—that is, corn that is eaten fresh as opposed to mature corn that is dried and ground. It's the same reason we call green beans green-- it's not because they are the color green, but because they are eaten in an immature stage instead of being dried. You will still find older recipes that refer to green (fresh) corn, it's actually a fairly recent development. Green Corn Moon Microgreens It's much too late in the year to plant corn and grow ears of corn, but it's a great time to sprout ears of corn (the part you eat is a also a seed!) and grown microgreens. This is a fun experiment for…

22Jul 2023 by catbird

Grass Harvest Moon

Autumn, Craft Project, Harvest Moon, Nature Art, Nature Collection

The Harvest Moon was so named in Europe because the light of the moon allowed farmers to work into the night to bring in the harvest. This full moon is always the one closer to the Autumnal Equinox, so although it most often occurs in September, it sneaks into October every now and again. The Diné call September’s moon the Big Harvest Moon. The Shoshone and the Passamaquoddy call September the Fall Moon, the Algonquin refer to the Middle Between Harvest and Eating Corn, and the Hopi people call this the Moon of the Full Harvest. In many places September is a time of Harvest and there are countless ways to celebrate the bounty of this time of year. I have been increasingly planting native ornamental grasses in my garden…

22Jul 2023 by catbird

Blue Moon Cyanotypes

Blue Moon, Craft Project, Full Moon, Nature Art, Nature Collection

Blue moons are slightly misunderstood. You see we have 12 months in our year, but there are 13 full moons. So each year there ends up being an "extra" moon in the western calendar. (This is not true of some other calendars.) If you are interested in this sort of thing, the way we got to the current western calendar is somewhat fascinating and insanely circuitous. But anyway, back to the moons, the extra moon doesn't always fall in same month and sometimes has it's own special name (like if it falls in September) but generally it gets called a blue moon. (Like the expression "once in a blue moon.") Why it's called a blue moon isn't abundantly clear, and according to astronomers the actually definition of a blue moon…

11Jul 2023 by catbird

Thunder Cake

Free Printable, Full Moon, Recipes, Thunder Moon

We love the book Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco, especially during a good summer thunder storm. There is a cake recipe in that book of course, but being a celiac it wasn't very useful to me. Besides I was intrigued with the idea of making a cake that contained or was inspired by some food that had historically been associated with storms and lighting. I kept coming across references to truffles (the mushroom not the confection) in my search-- it would seem that the ancient greeks believed that they were born of Zeus' lightning bolts. Very poetic, but I wasn't sold on truffle cake... I considered copping out and doing candy truffles instead, but that didn't seem in the spirit of things. (As an aside there is a whole group of…

01Jul 2023 by catbird

Painting with the Rain

Craft Project, Full Moon, Nature Art, Play, Thunder Moon

In spring we talk about spring showers, but that is a gentle kind of rain, whereas in summer it’s a wild downpour with huge fat drops of water and thunder and lightning, and it feels completely different. The science backs that up-- generally it rains the most frequently in spring, but the most rain falls in summer. There really are more thunderstorms in summer in temperate parts of the world– summer brings humid warm air up from the south, which then bumps into cooler, drier air from the north. Whenever two air masses meet like this the air becomes unstable. The cooler, denser air wedges itself under the warmer humid air and lifts it up. (Called an updraft.) As all that moisture rises up in the atmosphere, it begins to…

18Jun 2023 by catbird

Summer Solstice Fire Wheel

Campfire, Craft Project, Garden, Nature Art, Summer Portfolio, Summer Solstice

One of my favorite things to do is to sort through traditional observances from all around the world and find things that resonate for me and my family. My own celebration of the wheel of the year is generally secular, but I enjoy drawing on these ancient practices that have been celebrated for as long as we have records. This turn of the wheel I was struck by a Germanic/Slavic tradition of lighting an actual wheel on fire and rolling through town into a river. I initially discounted this for being ridiculously dangerous, but I kept thinking about it. I was then reading that people spread the ashes from their solstice fire on their gardens to make them extra healthy and productive. I have been having a pretty terrible garden…

Author: catbird