Thursday, March 12th, 2015

Good Morning Readers: 

Another beautiful morning in the Midwest, The Worm Moon is upon us here as I sit in my backyard listening to the birds singing as they search for their morning meal. The Snow has almost completely melted and the ground has begun to thaw bringing the  anticipation and the promise of abundance to avid gardeners. the Waxing Gibbous Moon gently reminds us to release that which we do not need in order to make space in our lives for the bounty to come. It is time to plan Spring Cleaning projects or to ready our tools for the gardening to come. Today the moon remains in Sagittarius, our energetic athletic sign of the zodiac, making it a perfect time to stroll the neighborhood  dream of our plans for Spring. Today is also a harvest day, so it may be a good day to trim back those kitchen herbs that have gotten a little straggly.

March: The Worm Moon
Snow slowly begins to melt, the ground softens, and earthworms show their heads again and their castings or fecal matter can be found. Other signs of spring gave rise to other variations: the cawing of crows (the Crow Moon); the formation of crusts on the snow from repeated thawing and freezing (the Crust Moon); and the time for tapping maple trees (the Sap Moon). Christian settlers also called this the Lenten Moon and considered it the last moon of winter.

Waxing Gibbous Moon:

The illustration may look a little complex at first, but it’s easy to explain.

Sunlight is shown coming in from the right. The earth, of course, is at the center of the diagram. The moon is shown at 8 key stages during its revolution around the earth. The moon phase name is shown alongside the image. The dotted line from the earth to the moon represents  the line of sight when looking at the moon. The large moon image shows what you would see at that point in the cycle. For the waning gibbous, third quarter and waning crescent phases you must mentally turn yourself upside down when imagining the line of sight. When you do this, you’ll “see” that the illuminated portion is on your left, just as you see in the large image.

One important thing to notice is that exactly one-half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun. Of course, that is perfectly logical, but you need to visualize it in order to understand the phases. At certain times, we see both the sunlit portion and the shadowed portion — and that creates the various moon phase shapes we are all familiar with. Also, note that the shadowed part of the moon is invisible to the naked eye; in the diagram above, it is only shown for clarification purposes. Finally, please realize this diagram is only meant to demonstrate how the phases work; the small inner moons in the diagram do not show the fact that the  same side of the moon always faces Earth.

So the basic explanation is that the lunar phases are created by changing angles (relative positions) of the earth, the moon, and the sun, as the moon orbits the earth.

Moon in Sagittarius:

When the moon resides in the sign of Sagittarius, we all subconsciously become Sagittarius. Optimism, vitality, generosity, good intention, striving for protection intensify, as well as a desire for philosophy, expansion of  our horizons or just a desire for a walk somewhere.

These days are favorable for studying, work, teaching, and also expansion of the area of interest,