Theresa here...

Solstice Blessings to everyone! Today (June 21st) is the longest day of the year, when we celebrate the life-giving heat of the Sun.

Today Bear & I try to be outside the whole day, staying in touch with the Sun and watching how it travels slowly across the sky. 

Sometimes we go places where it's easier to see the sunrise and sunset, but this year we are staying at our tiny homestead, to see what it's like to connect with the Sun in our own yarden. We watched the sunrise and marked where it happens in our stone circle.

I am trying to spend the day relaxing (which means not working in the garden). I am wondering about the yard, trying to stay in the moment. There is so much life, even in our less than 1/8 of an acre yard. I celebrate all the plant and animals that we've welcomed into our yarden (If you look closely, you might see some bugs on some of the flowers...):

We started small with a couple of hanging bird feeders and a ground feeder. The ground feeder was small and needed cleaning after it rained, so was no fun to take care of. We replaced it with stumps, which are pretty self cleaning in a hard rain and created a lot of room for more birds.

Theresa also put small tree limbs out the top of the post so there were more safe landing areas. As you can see, some birds had to wait in line to get to the food.

We feed the birds fine sunflower seeds with the shells removed. It's expensive, but there's less waste and less mess. The birds don't throw out the less attractive seeds to get to the ones they like.

To attract woodpeckers we added suet. Theresa heard that Baltimore orioles like grape jelly, so we added bowl for that. And yes, Theresa buys jelly without high fructose corn syrup for the birds.

You also need water for the birds. Theresa went out every other day to fill a small birdbath so the birds could drink and sometimes take baths. That changed in 2012...

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... The Major upgrade! We built a pond! No more pitchers of water to carry outside.

We also added a fence for more privacy and bird perches. The fence and tall sunchokes we planted nearby also help block the wind. Doesn't mean much in the Summer but in Winter it really helps...

Yep, in the winter. We feed the birds all year round. In Winter, on really cold or snowy days we use twice as much food, the birds need it. We also have a heater for the pond. It keeps an area open so the birds can drink. 

We use the Birds of Wisconsin Field Guide to identify the different types of birds. 

Here are photos of some of the 30+ types of birds that have visited the bird feeders in our yarden...

A robin, goldfinches, and scarlet tanagers seem to get along well.

Mr. and Mrs. Scarlet Tanager. The male is on the jelly. Scarlet tanagers and Baltimore orioles really like the grape jelly.

And here are the baltimore orioles. We thought the were just spring and early summer birds, but found out they will keep coming to the feeders if we keep putting out jelly.

Here we have a rare fur feathered waddler... Nah, that's Phil the woodchuck, he likes seeds too.

We have the rat tailed short feathered tree huger. Nah.. that's Wobbles the opossum. He eats thousands of ticks in the Summer so we like having him around.

Can't blame Wobbles. The OTH bird feeder is where the cool birds hang out in the winter, or at least a lot of cold gold finches.

Grossbeaks (left) are my favorite. The other bird is a red winged black bird.  They usually don't hang out at bird feeders. These two seem to get along.

Indigo buntings are rare and cool. They look like bluebirds, but their blue color is brighter, and the bluebirds have orange breasts.

It's a little stressful for the bird community when a hawk moves in. I thought he was a lousy hunter so I called him Mr. MaGoo. Then I realized he was still alive after stopping in our yard for over a month, so he had to be good enough to survive. He is now known as McGee.

We leave a large brush pile in (aka the birdie condo) in the back yard to provide shelter for birds close to the food.

W even get mourning doves. Here are two babies waiting on the path for their parents.

On some days the birds like to take baths in the pond.

From Theresa:

For our annual Winter Solstice celebration, we try to connect with Winter's darkness. On this longest night of the year, we don't turn on any lights once the sun sets (around 4 pm). We spend our evening in front of the wood stove, try to keep the Yule log burning all night, and then greet the Sun when it rises the next morning (around 7 am). This ritual of not using electrical lights lets us truly experience the dark, which is a rare occurrence in most of the USA, where we suffer from light pollution. I love our Solstice celebration, and always wish it could continue for more than one night. This year, thanks to an extended sick leave, I get to have my wish.

If you try to live connected to the seasons, then the darkness of Winter is a time for rest that promotes rejuvenation. It is a time to slow down and dream, to feed your soul with ideas that will help you choose what projects to work on come Spring. Accordingly, I've been reading random books and blogs that I don't usually have time for. This morning I picked up Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice. It's about eating seasonally and locally, using traditional cooking methods, in connection with the 13 lunar cycles. Turning to the current lunar month, I discovered she called it the Moon of Long Nights. She discusses how before the advent of electricity, we would normally have a Winter season of long nights with lots of extra sleep. She discusses other authors who believe that using electricity to stay up after the sun goes down keeps our bodies in a state of perpetual Summer, and traces this to our cravings for sugar and carbohydrates, which normally we would only have access to in the Summer. In the Winter, we would have been eating mostly protein. I like this quote:

Our biology says, "Curl up in the back of the cave and gnaw on a buffalo bone, then sleep for fourteen hours," while our society says, "Run around shopping in brightly lit stores and then stay out late at a [holiday] party drinking champagne, eating truffles, and being sociable with your coworkers."

Thanks to Bear's willingness to agree to this experiment, I'm looking forward to connecting with the season, which thankfully will mean getting more sleep and perhaps finding another way to connect with the Divine. If we were starting today, it would be time to go to bed now. Instead, Bear is still out shopping for birthday treats and we haven't had dinner yet.

I wonder what we will learn, or come to realize, or begin to remember from deep in our bones, when we sleep during the long, dark hours and remain active only during the light. In what ways will our body and spirits heal?