It is my habit of rising at 4am which gives me plenty of time to do a few "inside" household chores before heading outside just before the sun starts to rise above the pines on the far side of the Bayou. It is during that time that I can do my best "pondering" plus catch a few fish, shrimp or crabs for the noontime meal. Lately, however, Mark has been overloading us with fish so I have more time to do that thinking. A couple of days ago, that thinking turned to a full bit of memories and then turned to curiosity as so many of my ponderings do. I have to check things out to see just how accurate the old memory is.
The moon was just a tiny, bowl-shaped sliver of silvery white against the dark sky. I was just admiring the beauty when I heard some of Pop's words rattling around in the memories. He always used to call this a "dry moon" because that bowl was holding all the rain. Hmmm...dry moon. Well, it did seem to hold some truth because we are having a painfully dry couple of weeks. The garden definitely needs rain. That was beside the point just now, however, as I was more interested in that dry moon.
Sure enough, Pop may have been onto something...at least with the name. According to all I read, this phenomenon happens only a couple of times each year depending on where you live. It all has to do with the moon's orbit around the earth and the earth's orbit around the sun...AND...the tilt of the earth on its axis. Yep...scientific stuff going on there. Anyway, most of the time we see the sliver of the moon in a crescent sort of like a C but when the orbits do their thing and the moon looks like it is heading right down to the horizon, that C becomes more like a U all because of the way the sun illuminates it. Some folks call it a "wet moon" while other call it a "dry moon" but it is basically for the same reason. Folklore has it that when the moon is like a bowl, it is holding the rainwater thus giving a dry spell. So...wet moon or dry moon, that bowlful of water stays put and does the gardens no good. Folklore can seem confusing when the tales call things opposite names for the same reason. Still, both agree that the rainy season will come back when the moon (bowl) starts to tilt and the rain spills out and down to earth. NOW...it makes all the sense in the world...sort of...maybe.
Whether any of this holds true scientifically or whether it is purely folklore is yet to be seen but it sure is dry...and Pop said it so it has to be true. Good enough for me. So...my ponderance for the day seemed to totally hinge upon memories from so long ago. Who needs science when you had Pop to teach you these things?!!!
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