Welcome Summer, Welcome June

How the change in seasons changes our relationship with home

If you live in the States or anywhere along the same latitude lines, June brings a distinctive shift in our psyches, as well as our weather. After a month or two, or perhaps even three, of temperatures teasing and tiny bulbs blooming, summer truly begins. Rounded and ready, June takes matters into her own hands.

June is not a passive month. It’s a time for action and beginnings. Not the soft beginnings of fall when bulbs are planted, or January, when everything is still deep in the ground, still shadowed in darkness, or even spring when fresh shoots of grass and flowers begin to raise their tiny heads. June is a different kind of beginning.

Days are long and the extra light is energizing. Quick, now is the time, before the heat increases and makes us lazy. Now we have the whole summer ahead. Too soon, it will feel like it’s slipping away.

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The month of June is named after Juno, wife and queen of Jupiter. She is the Roman equal of the ancient Greek goddess, Hera, wife of Zeus. And it is as wife that she is most known.  Maybe that’s why we have so many weddings in June, in honor of the wife and spouse archetypes. Weddings, too, are action and beginnings, brimming with promise and possibility.

Gardening begins in earnest this month and, outside of nuptials, what speaks more of hopes and dreams manifested in something pragmatic than the planting of seeds and caring for small, tender things?

Today I purchased the first of some garden plants, unable to resist their seductive sprouts and the siren song of possibility.  In practicality, I will need to bring these herbs and veggies inside each evening for several weeks, as temperatures here still drop into the 40s. But waiting to buy them seems wrong. They are growing now, waiting for a home now, ready to put down their roots so they can later bear fruit.

Juno Lucina is another aspect of this goddess and this month.  In this facet, she is associated with the moon and female cycles, not only menses but childbirth, biological and cosmic time. Juno brings her vitality to the beginning of this month and then, with the Summer Equinox on the 21^st (this year, on the 20^th), she relaxes, steps back, and moves with the tides.

June brings a different feeling of home. June changes our experience of where we live. After so many months closed up and covered up, we open our windows and doors. We air out our rooms. We strip off our socks and step outside. Our home expands.

Now is the time to fire up the grill and bring out the lawn furniture. Time to get out the sprinklers and bathing suits and start stocking up on citronella candles. Time to string up the laundry line and hang clothes to dry in the sunshine. To garden with gusto.  I know a woman in Santa Barbara who moves her entire bedroom outside every summer, sleeping under the stars each night.

What about you? How does your home change beginning in June? What does June mean to you?