Spring Planting and the Vernal Equinox
Each spring, nature gives us our tasks for the coming year for growing our food, our flowers, our herbs, our landscapes and our health! We have to recognize these cues to provide our families with good nutrition and a healthy life.
So what is the Vernal Equinox and why is it important to all of us?
The Vernal Equinox is the day that the sun passes over into being more and more present (and heating up the days), than in the winter. Simply put, from this day forward, it will generally get hotter!
So what is the Vernal Equinox and why is it important to all of us?
The Vernal Equinox is the day that the sun passes over into being more and more present (and heating up the days), than in the winter. Simply put, from this day forward, it will generally get hotter!
The word "vernal” comes from the Latin word for spring, while equinox means "equal night", as both night and day last for 12 hours. As we all learned in school as children, our earth’s axis is tilted relative to the sun for most of its annual stroll. So for half of the year, more life giving warmth and light will either fall on the northern or southern hemispheres. So when it will be cold winter in the north, it will be balmy in the south. But twice a year, the earth’s axis will be directly perpendicular to the sun’s rays and they will fall directly on the equator before transitioning across to create the reversal of seasons. This occurs about March 20 in the northern hemisphere and September 22 in the southern hemisphere. So Spring starts in September south of the equator on the same day autumn starts north of the equator.
As far back as we have records of human civilization, tribes and cultures throughout the world, have marked the vernal equinox with rituals, celebrations and myths. It is important to recognize because, even before we invented agriculture and settled in fixed places, it was the manifestation of the underlying clockwork of the natural world that drives the migrations of our food and the emergence of the plants that sustain us.
And this still holds true today. You can see its enduring importance all over the world. In the Christian world it is marked by Easter festivals. In the middle east many celebrate Naw Ruz. The Indian tradition has the festival of Holi or the festival of colors. In Japan they have a national holiday to revere their ancestors. Native American tribes were known to mark their medicine wheels with plant or animal artifacts that emerged in the new season, such as an arriving migratory bird feather or a newly blooming essential plant.
And this still holds true today. You can see its enduring importance all over the world. In the Christian world it is marked by Easter festivals. In the middle east many celebrate Naw Ruz. The Indian tradition has the festival of Holi or the festival of colors. In Japan they have a national holiday to revere their ancestors. Native American tribes were known to mark their medicine wheels with plant or animal artifacts that emerged in the new season, such as an arriving migratory bird feather or a newly blooming essential plant.
Native American Medicine Wheel
So this should give us a very precise planting date, correct? Obviously not! Local weather conditions will change this. Our modern astronomical calendars have a hard time metering out the passage of the year (hence the leap year every four years when we tack on February 29th to even things out). Historically, mankind used lunar calendars that were tightly tied environmentally to recurring events in nature that sustained us, such as the migration of geese or the rising of maple sap. These environmentally linked lunar ‘months’ were named for events in nature that were important to those people, and because they were flexible, they were more accurate! Reindeer calving on the siberian steppes may be delayed by a couple weeks by an especially harsh winter, but the native Chukchee people would call this lunar month ‘graa-aa-alijn’ after this highly predictable recurring event and reset their annual calendars by extending or shortening this to include another lunar cycle. As their survival was heavily dependant on the reindeer births and their yearly migrations, it allowed them to re-synchronize their yearly activities accordingly.
Other indigenous people that depend heavily on the rhythms of nature for their survival, develop their own calendars and peg them to important environmental events in their world. Since the lunar cycles don’t stay aligned with the solar year, this may result in their traditional calendars having 12 or 13 lunar months, But because of the flexibility of syncing up to important events in their world, they are more useful.
The native Klamath people of Oregon in the American northwest used a 10 month calendar that they tracked by counting their fingers. But since their livelihood was dependant on the edible water-lily seeds that they harvested from their marshy landscape about the end of September, they would mark the beginning of their new year with the first new moon following the end of the seed harvest. So the tasks of drying, roasting and grinding the seeds into flour that would sustain their clans for the rest of the year, were tasks for the new year. After 10 lunar cycles, they would just extend that last ‘month’ until the new harvest of ‘wokas’ returned.
The native Klamath people of Oregon in the American northwest used a 10 month calendar that they tracked by counting their fingers. But since their livelihood was dependant on the edible water-lily seeds that they harvested from their marshy landscape about the end of September, they would mark the beginning of their new year with the first new moon following the end of the seed harvest. So the tasks of drying, roasting and grinding the seeds into flour that would sustain their clans for the rest of the year, were tasks for the new year. After 10 lunar cycles, they would just extend that last ‘month’ until the new harvest of ‘wokas’ returned.
In the Solomon Islands of the Pacific Ocean, the native Nggela people depend on the sea for their sustenance. So they are deeply in tune with the cycles of marine life. They synchronize their lunar calendar to the reproductive swarming of the coral sea worm, which occurs just after dark on the first or second night after the October full moon, which they call ‘odu’ after the worm.
As our modern stratified civilizations have evolved and we have developed other needs, we have moved away from these highly useful environmentally based calendars to astronomical calendars. In each of our societies, more and more of us have become distant from nature and the annual natural cycles that sustain all of us. Our meats and vegetables appear magically each day in our supermarkets from all over the globe, and we have become un-moored from where they come from. It has become increasingly true that only those of us that live in the fundamental level of society that lives by this knowledge, to produce our meats and fish and grow our vegetables, are aware of their importance. Perhaps our global celebrations of the coming of each spring is a way of keeping us tied to the importance of our natural world.
As our modern stratified civilizations have evolved and we have developed other needs, we have moved away from these highly useful environmentally based calendars to astronomical calendars. In each of our societies, more and more of us have become distant from nature and the annual natural cycles that sustain all of us. Our meats and vegetables appear magically each day in our supermarkets from all over the globe, and we have become un-moored from where they come from. It has become increasingly true that only those of us that live in the fundamental level of society that lives by this knowledge, to produce our meats and fish and grow our vegetables, are aware of their importance. Perhaps our global celebrations of the coming of each spring is a way of keeping us tied to the importance of our natural world.
So it is not surprising that so many cultures have used the vernal equinox to either mark the beginning of a new year, or to mark it with celebrations of rebirth or new beginnings. It has played a central role in our survival since the very dawn of humankind. As long as we are sustained by plants and animals, we need to take its notice.
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