I walk about, taking stock of the innumerable changes on the hillside. The clump of golden asters is now dry and brown, the milkweeds, stripped of their leaves, are straight spikes thrusting up from the ground and holding the browning seed pods. Seeds are everywhere. I find them between my fingers when I run my hands through the grass tops. Autumn is a time of accounting, summing up, harvest and inventory. – Edwin Way Teale

Weather Trends

Average high temperatures (the average of high and low) sink below 60 throughout the area for the first time since the middle of April. And average lows edge down to near 40. Still, the cool is not bad for outside work: between now and the arrival of early winter (the first week of December), there should be about 25 mild, dry days for fertilizing, harvesting, wood cutting, planting spring field and garden crops, raking leaves, transplanting, and digging in spring bulbs.

The fifth cold front of the month, accompanied by precipitation, is expected around the 23rd of the month, and chances for frost this week will be highest after that date. Afternoon temperatures will be mostly in the 50s and 60s, with 70s coming about 30 percent of the time, and cold days only in the 30s or 40s occurring one year in five. The days in the final third of October likely to bring a killing frost are the 25th and the 26th, both having a 35-percent chance of a low only in the 20s, the first time this season the chances have risen so high.

The Natural Calendar

Goldenrod flowers darken and turn to downy tufts. Pokeweed berries shrivel and fall. Wingstem turns brittle from the cold. Knotweed withers. Jerusalem artichokes yellow, stalks collapsing. Dahlias blacken.

The sun’s passage from Libra to Scorpio on Cross-Quarter Day marks the halfway point to solstice and tilts the hinge of Middle Autumn, initiating the most dramatic period of leaf fall. Throughout this final stage of the natural year, the landscape becomes fully primed for the new signs and seasons to come.

The last sandhill cranes depart their northern nesting grounds in Michigan, the first formations reaching the Ohio Valley sky just days before the arrival of Late Fall in early November. The last monarchs sail over the last roses. The last black walnuts and Osage fruits come down. The last raspberry bushes and apple trees give up their fruit. The last autumn violets and dandelions often go into dormancy.

As cloud cover increases, the mornings become colder and the wind speed approaches winter levels. Inclement weather makes the addition of paperwhites and amaryllis bulbs a wise choice to create an indoor blooming season with which to counter the radical changes of Late Fall and Early Winter.

This is the average killing frost date at average elevations along the 40th Parallel. Intense decline in peak leaf color occurs as the pointers of the Big Dipper become aligned exactly north and south at 9 p.m.

The last warblers and swallows leave the region now, along with almost every butterfly except the cabbage white. Rutting time approaches for white-tailed deer. Robin migration season becomes more boisterous, bringing vast flocks of robins fluttering, chattering, whinnying through the high trees along the river valleys. Aster season closes and fall raspberry season gives up its final raspberries.

In the Field and Garden

Under the dark moon, complete fall pruning and bulb planting in October’s remaining mild weather.

Spread manure on the field and garden: wait until all the leaves have fallen to feed trees, perennials and shrubs. Dig onions; cut flowers and herbs for drying. Get your woodpile covered, too.

Complete fall pruning in October’s remaining mild weather. Spread manure on the field and garden after testing the soil, but wait until all the leaves have fallen to feed trees, perennials, and shrubs.

As the moon wanes, divide peonies, lilies, and iris, then plant crocus, daffodils, tulips, snowdrops, and aconites before November turns the weather much chillier. Dig up onions; remove the mum tops; cut flowers and herbs for drying. Get your woodpile covered, too. Transplant roses, pussy willows and perennials. Put in new shrubs and trees.

The sales seasons of budding Christmas cacti, amaryllis and paperwhites begin near Thanksgiving. Bring your plants to the farmers markets.

Begin watering of shrubs and trees, and continue through mid-November in order to provide plantings – especially new transplants – full moisture for the winter months.

Prepare mulch for November protection of sensitive plants and shrubs.

Wrap new trees with burlap to help them ward off winter winds. Complete fall field and garden tillage before the November rains. Testing of stored forage soon pays dividends by helping you prepare balanced winter rations for your flock and herd.

Almanack Classics

Gone Fishin’

By Mike Miller, Greene County, Ohio

Every summer, my parents would drop me off at my grandparents’ house, which was an ancient log house situated on 400 acres in the Ozark Mountain foothills.

It was a wonderful place for a young boy to be. There were seemingly endless hardwood forests, every kind of wildlife, and clear running streams that were chock full of very naïve, catchable fish, and I fished those creeks every day.

My grandparents (Big Mom and Pap) were poor by most people’s standards, and they lived a lifestyle that many would consider primitive.  They used oil lamps for light and carried drinking water from the spring in porcelain buckets. Pap grew and sold vegetables for a living, and he worked the land with a team of white mules. Old Mom and Pap always had one pig and one cow, which they butchered in the fall and stored at a neighbor’s house that had electricity and a freezer. They also used a two-holer outhouse, which had mercifully been dug a considerable distance from the house.

I was young and a long way from home, but my mother would send a dollar bill every week, which I would use to replenish my supply of fishhooks and bobbers. I could do that when we took that “weekly trip to town.”

I’ll never forget the time I opened my mail, and there was a FIVE DOLLAR BILL from Mom. It was extremely big money for my 10-year-old self in 1959. I touched it a lot and kept moving it from one pocket to another, waiting for that trip to town.

I was so attached to that bill that I had it with me in the two-holer one morning and accidentally dropped it down the adjacent hole. I could see it right there, high and dry, sitting on layers of Sears catalog pages and lime and other stuff.

The immediate problem was that I could see through the cracks in the door that Big Mom was on her way down the hill. If I left the outhouse to find a long stick or something to retrieve my treasure, she might inadvertently use the wrong hole, and the results would be unthinkable.

I had no choice. I lowered myself into that hole, head down, with my torso stretched to its limit, the grip of my lower extremities being the only thing between me and a fate I still don’t wish to contemplate. I retrieved that five.

I opened the door, keeping the money hidden behind my back, and said to Big Mom: “Next!”

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.

KLCHA             CHALK

LAKC CALK

ABLK BALK

WAKG GAWK

HAKW HAWK

WAUKQS            SQUAWK

LAKT TALK

KLAW WALK

POEHC            EPOCH

KOW            WOK

THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER

CABH

LOCB

CLBLO

KCROC

COD

DCKO

COKRF

CJKO

LOCKF

KOHC

Listen to Poor Will’s radio almanack on podcast any time at www.wyso.org. 

Copyright 2024, W. L. Felker