06/01/2026
Híŋhaŋni laȟči.
we're in Wípazuka Wasté Wi the moon of the june berries. the name carries the teaching. the moon of sweetness, of abundance. the time the berries come and the land starts handing back what it spent all spring making.
but i'll be honest with you about what we're watching out here.
the berries don't keep the same calendar they used to. spring came two to three weeks early across our part of the midwest this year. leaves out early, blossoms out early, everything waking before it should. and that's not just a feeling the growing season here is about two weeks longer than it was in the 1950s, and southern minnesota keeps getting warmer and wetter, the rain coming harder and less even.
here's the hard part. waking early doesn't mean the frost is done. the plants come out of dormancy trusting the warmth, then a late cold snap moves through and catches the blossoms open. that's how you lose a berry season before it starts. early spring, late frost, then a summer that swings between too much rain and not enough.
2024 was the warmest year minnesota has ever recorded. you don't need a chart to feel it. you can feel it in how the seasons don't sit still anymore.
the old people watched the plants to know the time. the first bloom, the first berry, the cottonwood seed in the air. those markers still teach. but they're moving and that movement is the lesson now. it asks us to pay closer attention, not less.
so this moon, if you walk past a berry bush the wild rose along the ditch, the june berries, the chokecherries coming in take a minute. notice when they're really fruiting this year. not when the calendar says. when they actually do it. write it down if you can.
that watching is the old way of keeping time. it still works. it just asks more of us now than it used to.
Wípazuka Wasté Wi. the moon of sweetness. still sweet. just asking us to pay closer attention to keep it that way.
