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Equinox in the Moon Garden

© Barbara Hall

The Autumn Equinox (spring for you folks on the other end of this big blue marble we're all dancing about on) is one of the two times each year when the giant pendulum of day and night comes to the center and hangs still for a moment. All is in balance. Equal day and night. At this time (or close thereto) it is possible to stand a raw egg on end and expect it to stay. If you've never tried it you probably aren't aware of how truly impossible it is to do at other times of the year.

I've been standing eggs on end at the Equinox for years. Unfortunately, the official egg-standing time is 1:37 a.m. this season. Not a good time for much of a party. I've had terribly official parties to which at least one dog is always invited to lap up any eggs that get away from us. One year I was teaching an herb class right before the official egg-standing time and as it was an evening class, no one could stay for the fun. So I sat at a school desk, alone in a classroom, endeavoring to get this egg to stand on its end - much to the puzzlement of the evening janitor who eventually picked up an egg and joined me. We looked at our up-standing eggs on the desks and figured the Equinox had been duly noted.

It's REALLY too bad we don't get a full moon for all this wee-hours egg standing. But one thing has nothing to do with the other. As a matter of fact, while the Moonlit Madness Event was shaping up among the editors here at Suite101, we all discovered that the "full" moon (which is merely a shadow cast, not an actual "event") is quite different from hemisphere to hemisphere. There I was looking at an American calendar and reciting that the full moon for October was on the 4th and the New Moon was on the 20th and having one of our editors from Australia look at his Australian calendar and recite TOTALLY different dates back to me! Isn't the Internet somethin'...

Anyway, it's just too bad we can't combine everything and have one moonlit bash in the Moon Garden for this. Actually, here at nearly 9 p.m. on the eve of the Equinox, I am questioning the sanity of going up to the Moon Garden after a day of rain with the moon nowhere to be seen at 1:37 in the morning to stand eggs.... Perhaps I'll THINK about it while I'm sleeping.

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