When June is here – what art have we to sing the whiteness of the lilies midst the green on noon-tranced lawns? Or lash of roses seen like redbirds’ wings? Or earliest ripening Prince-Harvest apples, where the cloyed bees cling round winey juices oozing down between the peckings of the robin, while we lean in under-grasses, lost in marveling? – James Whitcomb Riley

The Second Week of Early Summer

The Week That the First Day Lilies Bloom

In the Sky

The Sun reaches its apparent highest position in the sky, a declination of 23 degrees, minus 26 minutes, on June 19th. It remains at that height through June 23rd. On the 24th it begins to fall (starts to appear to become lower) a fraction of a degree every 24 hours. The effect is not measurable on sunrise/sunset charts until the 26th when the night grows by a minute for the first time since the middle of December.

Phases of the Fledgling Moon

June 6: The Fledgling Moon is new.

June 14: The moon enters its second quarter.

June 21: The moon is full.

June 28: The moon enters its final quarter.

Weather Trends

Cool fronts are due to cross the Mississippi on or about June 2, 6, 10, 15, 23 and 29. Major storms are most likely to occur on the days from June 5-8, June 13-17, and June 24-28. Lunar perigee on June 2 and new moon on June 6 increases the chances of freezing temperatures. Full Moon on June 21 could contribute to unstable meteorological conditions in conjunction with the June 15 cool front and encourage the formation of an early hurricane (bringing heavy rains to the Midwest).

The Natural Calendar

Catalpa and wild cherry trees are flowering. The earliest fireflies come out this week. Staghorns are reddening on the sumacs. Poison hemlock and elderberries and daisies are in flower. The hatching of ducklings and goslings is almost complete.

At average elevations along the 40th Parallel, the winter wheat is just about ready to turn. Banks of yellow stella d’oro lilies are open around shopping mall parking lots. The canopy has closed above the woodland wildflowers when clovers and vetches are all blooming in the fields.

In the Field and Garden

The darkening moon is right for all kinds of animal care, for planting root crops, shrubs and trees, and for weeding and mulching, as well as for insect and parasite hunting. Do routine maintenance and herd and flock care as the moon wanes. While you are making plans for summer, think ahead to breeding time. Finalize all spring culling. Make tentative notes about which animal to breed to which, why and when.

Slugs are causing problems if the land is wet. Alfalfa weevil infestations become more common just as pickle planting is completed and the earliest zucchini and squash harvests are underway.

Bean leaf beetles are in the fields; flies are bothering the cattle; hot weather often stresses poultry and livestock. Corn is almost all planted, and some stalks of corn have six to eight leaves.

Countdown to Late Summer 

• Just a few days until the first mulberries are sweet for picking and cottonwood cotton drifts in the wind

• Two weeks until wild black raspberries ripen, until fledgling robins peep in the bushes and fireflies mate in the night

• Three weeks until bee balm blooms and beckons all the bees

• Four weeks until the start of day lily season and cicadas chant in the hot and humid days

• Five weeks until thistles turn to down

• Six weeks until sycamore bark starts to fall, marking the center of Deep Summer

• Seven weeks to the season of singing crickets and katydids after dark

• Eight weeks until ragweed pollen floats in the wind

• Nine weeks until blackberries are ready for jam and brandy

• 10 weeks until aster and goldenrod time

Almanack Literature

A Blessing To Be Blind

By Larry Motel, Greenwich, Ohio

In 1946, when dad and mom bought a home on the bay side of the Marblehead Peninsula, I was so happy! I could walk to the woods, open fields and the water every day. I was 10 years old at the time.

There I met two brothers who became life-long friends. Tom was a year younger than me, and Jim was a year older. When we first met, I saw Jim’s one eye was half gone and scarred over. Then I found out he was completely blind.

Later I found out that when he was about 4 years old, he and an older boy were playing with sticks, as in sword fighting, and Jim got his eye badly damaged. By the time he was 6, the other eye got infected and he turned blind.

Well, Jim ended up going to the school for the blind in Columbus, but was home for three months in the summer. We all liked to swim, and Jim was really good at it as he was always physically active. During the last few years in the school for the blind, he took up wrestling. He was so good that when he graduated, he got a scholarship to Baldwin-Wallace College.

He did so well in wrestling there that he was offered a scholarship to Ohio State. He took it and this move changed his life for the better forever. He met a girl who had been blind from birth, and they fell in love. After Jim graduated, they got married.

He later told his brother Tom and me that maybe it was a blessing to be blind because he would never have met someone he loved so much.

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