🗻Mountains and meteor showers🌠

plus some musings about mis-named plants

Creag Meagaidh, Cairngorms National Park, Scotland

Dear you,

How’s May going for you so far? I’m just back from an awe-inspiring visit to the Highlands of Scotland which involved a thigh-burningly-challenging hike to the top of the Monroe - Creag Meagaidh - pictured above in the Cairngorms National Park. On this hike I was having a conversation with a Scottish pal about the number of Gaelic words there are for colours that in English, we only have one of e.g. there are at least 6 words to describe shades of green. I also discovered that the ‘gorm’ part of Cairngorms translates to ‘blue’ - so in full this means the blue cairns. This got me pondering about why Bluebells are so-called and the time before the word ‘purple’ was commonly used to describe this colour in English.

In the last edition of this newsletter, I wrote about Beltane, the Lunar Fire Festival which marks the start of Summer but at the time of writing, less than a fortnight ago, Summer felt a long way of. But now, as if Goddess Flora has suddenly awoken, the woodlands are bursting into colour with Bluebells, Red Campions and Green Alkanets. These three species all have very interesting names which refer to a colour which is different to how we’d describe them today - more on this later!

First, here are some seasonal dates to orientate you into May:

• 19 April and 28 May: Eta Aquariid meteor shower (peaked on 6 May)

• 8 May: New Flower Moon in Taurus 04:22 BST

• 17 May: National Endangered Species Day

• 21 May: Sun moves into Gemini

• 23 May: Full Flower Moon in Sagittarius 14:53 BST

• 1-31 May: No Mow May

🌠Eta Aquariid meteor shower

Despite peaking on Monday night (6 May), there is still around a week to see this meteor shower which is moderately active meteor shower associated with Halley’s Comet and originating from the constellation of Aquarius. This is the second meteor shower of 2024 after the Lyrids which occurred between 14-30 April.

Some facts about the meteor shower of May from my favourite source, Royal Museums Greenwich:

• Unlike most major annual meteor showers, there is no sharp peak for this shower, but rather a plateau of good rates that last approximately one week centred on 6-7 May.

• The Eta Aquariids is one of two meteor showers created by debris from Comet Halley. The other is the Orionid meteor shower which comes in October.

• The beautiful streaks we see in the night sky can actually be caused by particles as small as a grain of sand!¹

Comet and mountain

♉Taurus New Moon

When the moon is in Taurus it is a time to find your roots and recognise what