By Bill Felker One has only to sit down in the woods or fields or by the shore of the river or lake, and nearly everything of interest will come round…. The change of the seasons is like the passage of strange and new countries; the zones of the earth, with all their beauties and marvels, pass one’s door — John Burroughs The Moon and Stars The Cottonwood Cotton Moon, fat throughout the week, reaches perigee, its position closest to Earth, on May 25 at 9 p.m. and then becomes full on May 26 at 6:14 a.m. A partial eclipse of this moon will be visible beginning a little before 5 a.m. and ending a little a after 6 a.m. in the Ohio Valley. The moon then wanes into June, entering its last quarter at 2:34 a.m. on the 2nd and reaching apogee (its position farthest from Earth, on June 7. Just before you go to bed, find the Milky Way filling the eastern half of the sky, running from the north and “Z” shaped Cassiopeia, through Cygnus the Swan, then through Aquila and finally to Scutum and Sagittarius deep in the southeast. Weather Trends Precipitation and clouds often mark the last week of May. During the period between the 25th and 27th, rain falls between 50 and 60 percent of the time, with the 29th being one of the rainiest days in the whole year (historically speaking). The time of frost, however, is over for this spring and summer. Zeitgebers (Events in Nature that Tell the Time of Year) The emerging season for the 17-year cicadas (with their distinctive reddish bodies) continues in locations throughout the Ohio Valley. Cottonwood trees are in bloom, seeds floating through the countryside. Fawn births peak as the wild roses fade. A few mulberries are ready to pick. May apples are setting fruit. Pollen from grasses reaches its peak in the central portions of the United States, as bluegrass, orchard grass, timothy, red top and Bermuda grass all continue to flower. Bottle grass is fresh and sweet for chewing. In the forests of the North, pines, spruce, hemlock, arbor vitae, alders, and birch reach the height of their blossoming. In the rivers, lizard’s tail has three leaves. July’s wood nettle is a foot tall. Deep red ginger has replaced toad trillium close to the ground around the small open fingers of white sedum. Mind and Body The S.A.D. Index, which measures seasonal stress on a scale from 1 to 100, reaches a high of 33 on May 26 (thanks to the full moon and lunar perigee), but then it falls steadily throughout the period, dipping deep into the harmless teens during early June. In the Field and Garden Processing tomato transplanting is usually three-fourths finished as poison hemlock blooms by the roadsides. Watch for frost at full moon; this moon will be the final one of the first half of the year to bring the slight threat of a freeze. Soybeans are half planted, a third sprouted. Almost half the winter wheat has headed up, and more than fifteen percent of the alfalfa hay has been cut. Slugs are a problem in wet no-till fields, and alfalfa weevil infestations become more common in the alfalfa. Plant all the rest of your midsummer root crops while the moon darkens. Finish the soybean planting any time you can. Flies are bothering the cattle. Hot weather often begins to stress poultry and livestock by this date. Field corn is almost all planted now, and nine out of ten kernels have emerged. In the northern tier of states, the spring wheat and the oats are just about all in the ground. ALMANACK CLASSICS “Show Me Where the Cows Are” An Almanack Story by Mrs. Carlyle (Ruth) Schindler of Fort Jennings, Ohio First Printed in Poor Will in July of 1989 In past Depression days (the 1930s), there were few toys to play with so we invented our own things for play. One thing we did was walk on a rolling metal trash barrel. Another was splash through mud puddles after a rain barefooted. Still the best of all, and my favorite, was yelling at spiders in the outhouse. There seemed to be plenty of granddaddy longleg spiders back then. You’d find one and start in a low voice saying: ‘Show me where the cows are.’ If it didn’t raise its leg, you would just keep getting closer and closer and louder and louder until it usually did raise a leg (pointing in the direction of the cows). The spiders wouldn’t run from you - they seemed petrified. Sometimes they’d be on the floor, so I’d lie on my stomach and yell at them. I spent many hours this way. And, yes, the spiders did point the right way to the cows in the field behind the house, silly as it may sound.” One day Ruth was home alone, calling to the spiders when a travelling salesman came along. “He knocked at the front door of the house,” she remembers, “and then at the back door and finally came out to the outhouse. I was watching through the peephole. He pushed the door of the outhouse in, and I slammed it back, knocking him down. Last I saw him, he was running down the road.” Poor Will Needs Your Stories! Poor Will pays $4.00 for unusual and true farm, garden, animal and even love stories used in this almanack! Send yours to to Poor Will’s Almanack at P.O. Box 431, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387 or to wlfelker@gmail.com. ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S SCRAMBLER In order to estimate your SCRAMBLER IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find one of Poor Will’s typos, add another 15 points to your IQ. NOITULOSERRI IRRESOLUTION CUMCIROLCUNIOT CIRCUMLOCUTION TIONUTITSBUS SUBSTITUTION IONTTTUSERI RESTITUTION VELULOTION REVOLUTION EEOUIONTCRCL ELECTROCUTION PRSCTNOEUIO PROSECUTION ONTIUBRITER RETRIBUTION INLOVTUNIO INVOLUTION SIDIRTTUBNOI DISTRIBUTION THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER VEIBUAS LOCLUSVEI EVISULCNOC NOCUDCVEI LUSEDIVE FFDSVIUIE FFSVEUIE XCLSVEIUE IUIEVSLL IUIEVSLCN Poor Will’s Almanack for 2021 (with the S.A.D. Index) Is Still Available! For your autographed copy, send $20.00 (includes shipping and handling) to Poor Will, P.O. Box 431, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387. Copyright 2021 - W. L. Felker
|
