To rest, go to the woods

Where what is made is made

Without your thought or work. – Wendell Berry

 

The Fourth Week of Late Summer

In the Sky

Venus appears in Virgo as the Evening Star this month. Jupiter rises in Taurus ahead of autumn’s Orion. Mars, in Gemini, follows Orion into the night. Saturn comes up in the evening in Aquarius.

Phases of the Nutters’ Moon 

September is prime time in much of the country to find hickory nuts, pecans and walnuts already fallen to the ground

Sept. 11: The moon enters its second quarter

Sept. 17: The moon is full

Sept. 24: The moon enters its final quarter

Weather Trends

Weather history suggests that the cold waves of Early Winter usually cross the Mississippi River on or about the following dates: Sept. 8, 12, 15, 20, 24 and 29.

The Natural Calendar

White and violet asters, orange beggarticks and bur marigolds, late field goldenrod, and zigzag goldenrod come into bloom, blending with the last of the purple ironweed, yellow sundrops, blue chicory, touch-me-nots, showy coneflowers and great blue lobelias.

The autumn crop of raspberries darkens. Wild plums are ready for jelly when starlings gather on the high wires. Many locust trees are brown from leaf miners. Buckeyes can be half yellow. The earliest ash trees blush at the approach of autumn.

Deep in the woods, the final days of the year’s wildflowers coincide with the first days of second spring, which are actually the first days of next spring. March’s purple deadnettle comes up in the garden. Wood mint produces new stalks. Watercress revives in the sloughs. Next May’s sweet rockets and next July’s avens send up fresh basal leaves. Sweet Cicely foliage grows back. Sedum reappears, stalky from its canopied summer. Sometimes great swarms of dragonflies migrate through the Lower Midwest at the beginning of September.

In the Field and Garden

Plant crocus, aconites, snowdrops, daffodils and tulips while the moon is still dark. Peonies and other perennials may be fertilized this month for improved flowering next spring and summer. This is also an excellent time to enlarge day lily and iris collections.

Get ready to seed or re-seed in September or October for spring pasture.

The harvest of apples, tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes and corn silage, and the third cutting of alfalfa hay continue throughout the week. Corn is typically denting on about a quarter of all the fields, and the commercial tomato harvest is 30 percent complete many years.

Be especially careful with your pregnant animals during cold snaps, as environmental stress can induce abortion. And when frost hurts root crops, don’t feed them to your pregnant does and ewes. The frost can change the composition of the roots and may contribute to abortions.

The major months just before major seasonal change – September, December, March, and June – are excellent times to set up a vaccination timetable for your livestock. Changes in the season bring weather extremes as well as stress, so you will be taking care of routine health care at the most important times of the year.

Commercial pickle season is usually over, and peach picking may be done for the year. Some fencerow vegetation turns green as next spring’s avens, violets, sweet cicely, mint, and sweet rocket grow back.

The cutting of silage sometimes takes over from the second and third cuts of hay. The harvest of winter wheat and oats is complete throughout the nation. When apple pickers finish picking all the summer apples, they start picking the fall apples.

Almost everywhere above the Equator, people are digging potatoes, and harvesting tomatoes. The seasons for everbearing strawberries, plums, pears, watermelons and peaches are about done in the South, just starting in the North.

Elderberries and wild grapes should be perfect for juice and wine by the middle of the month. Mum-selling time is approaching for the mum growers.

Almanack Literature

Target, the Bottle-Drinking Ewe

By Hannah Zimmerman, Lyndonvile, N.Y.

The most ridiculous bottle lamb story? That’s easy!

Target (so-named for the spot on her head) loved the bottle so dearly after she was rejected by her mother that she never forgot it.

Now, whenever the girls feed the most recently rejected or orphaned lambs, this big, grown-up ewe comes up to the gate and begs for her turn.

The girls cannot resist their precious (but huge) bottle lamb. They have let her suck the bottle as she stood nursing her own lambs. No matter if they laugh at her…as long as Target gets her turn at the bottle, she’s fine.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S SCKRAMBLER

In order to estimate your Sckrambler IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find a typo, add another 15 points to your IQ.

LEWOB              ELBOW

OOEB                OBOE

MMUBO            MUMBO

OBMUJ             JUMBO

AEAUFLMB       FLAMBEAU

HOOB               HOBO

RBOUT             TURBO

BOMMA            MAMBO

WOBCRSSO      CROSSBOW

CELAPBO          PLACEBO

THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER

KERAB    

CKBAER    

REKNAB    

RRKBAE    

AIETBR    

LABRIE    

ATHEBR   

RWSNAE    

NAREG    

TERBAN

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Copyright 2024, W. L. Felker