Here is something from Maria Thun’s calendars that I don’t understand. In the 2011 and 2012 calendars, the Moon passes its ascending node near the end of planting time, and descending node near the beginning. (Typically there is about one day between these two events.) In the 2008 calendar the moon passed its nodes 4-5 days after the end and beginning of planting time, resp. The variation between years I guess relates to the rotation of the Moon’s orbit, which makes the nodes complete one revolution in 18,6 years. This I can in general terms understand, but parts of this pattern still puzzles me.
If the moon, for example, passes the ascending node just before the beginning of planting time (eg, 31 Oct and 2 Nov resp in 2012), then the Moon will continue to ascend only a short time further after passing the node, as it levels off just before the beginning of planting time, and then starts to descend. One would then expect some sort of symmetry, and hence that the Moon would pass the descending node just after passing the highest point of its orbit, i.e. one or a few days into planting time.
But no, it passed in this and other examples much later than that (14 Nov), just before reaching the lowest point (15 Nov) which was even after the end of planting time (13 Nov). A noticeable lack of symmetry. How can this be?