Dec. 19-25, 2011

If we didn’t remember winter in spring, it wouldn’t be as lovely; if we didn’t think of spring in winter, or search winter to find some new emotion of its own to make up for the absent ones, half the keyboard of life would be missing. We would be playing life with no flats or sharps, on a piano with no black keys ... Winter stress makes summer sweetness – and the stress of warm times makes us long for the strange sweetness of cold ones.

-Adam Gopnik

Lunar phase and lore

The first moon of 2012, the Camel-Back Cricket Moon, is new on Christmas Eve at 1:06 p.m. Throughout the cold months ahead, camel-back crickets often emerge from hidden corners of your house to explore; they bring good luck (according to almanac lore) if you find them and let them go about their work.

Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the new moon moves overhead in the middle of the day and early afternoon, making the hours near noon the most favorable lunar times for hunting, fishing and feeding children. When the barometer falls in advance of the Christmas and New Year’s cold fronts, game and people tend to eat even more.

Weather patterns

The high-pressure system of Dec. 21 is the first of the “white Christmas” fronts, and it brings snow to the northern half of the country about half of all the years. The front that crosses the Mississippi near Dec. 25 also carries a 50 percent chance for frozen precipitation, but the weather often clears for Christmas Day.

Dec. 26 is typically the coldest day of the week and has almost a 40 percent chance for highs just in the teens or 20s above the Ohio Valley. Dec. 28 is the darkest day of the period in the East and Middle Atlantic states, with a 70 percent chance for clouds.

The New Year’s weather system typically brings rain to the South, sleet or snow to the North and is followed by deep winter, the coldest time of year in North America.

Zeitgebers for next week include the diminishing number of honeysuckle berries, the bare pear trees and the deepening silence of the woodlands. At solstice, the sun is the best zeitgeber of all, rising and setting at its points farthest south. Marking the dawn or sundown position relative to a window in your home, you will need no paper calendar to mark natural time throughout the year to come.

Daybook

Dec. 19: This is the week of the shortest days of the year throughout the region, and today is the first of those days. The sun lies at its lowest point in the noon sky, and it rises and sets at its farthest points south.

Solar declination reaches 23 degrees, 26 minutes on Dec. 20 and remains at that position on Dec. 22-23. The length of the night grows to its longest time of all on this date, and that amount of darkness holds through Christmas.

Dec. 20: The Dec. 20 weather system is often relatively mild (compared to systems of Dec. 15 and 25), but it has a good chance of producing snow all across the northern tier of states. Since the moon becomes new on Dec. 24 this year, the chances rise for severe weather (strong winds and rain across the South, blizzard conditions across the North) throughout this holiday period.

Dec. 21: In the perennial garden, tall coneflower stalks have collapsed, and white boneset has lost its seeds. The small white asters, their seed heads empty, are leaning toward the aging Osage fruits. In ponds and lakes, the swamp rushes lie with the Lizard’s tail flat across the water. Hydrangea heads are drooping, and the Jerusalem artichokes have fallen over.

Grasses are pale and bent. Hoary goldenrod and brittle great ragweed have broken. Pokeweed, hollow and empty, rattles in the wind. The snow and the overwintering robins pull off the honeysuckle berries. Winterberry branches are drooping to let down their fruit. Bittersweet hulls continue to split away from their branches.

Dec. 22: Prune trees and shrubs before the moon turns new, the lunar pivot for fresh growth to begin.

Dec. 23: Tomorrow is new moon day. Expect it to intensify the Christmas cold front. Indoors, get your bedding plants planted under lights with gentle radiant heat provided below the flats. Root grape vine cuttings, too.

Dec. 24: The foliage of the hardiest herbs and flowers melts tight against the frozen but nurturing ground. Sweet rocket, garlic mustard, ragwort, celandine, poppies, thistles, chives and parsley crouch in wait like new seeds for the Red-Winged Blackbird Moon of February and March.

Dec. 25: Mark the deepest incursion of the sun through one of your south windows today. A pencil line on the floor or wall will provide a comforting measure of the advance of spring not only in your home, but in all of North America.

The 2012 Almanack has 300 pages of stories, essays and notes on farming and gardening. Send $20 to: Poor Will, P.O. Box 431, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387. Add $3 for Priority Mail (2- to 3-day shipping).