By Bill Felker

 The scriptures of nature can be read in their original versions, untranslated by religions, unedited, unabridged. This is the universe’s university. The voices of nature echo along its corridors, and in them are truths that have inspired the genius of every age. – Ken Carey

The Moon and Sun

The Cottonwood Cotton Moon entered its second quarter on May 19 at 2:13 p.m. and reaches perigee, its position closest to Earth, at 9 p.m. on May 25; it becomes full at 6:14 a.m. on May 26. Full moon so close to perigee creates Supermoon conditions. A partial eclipse of this moon will be visible beginning a little before 5 a.m. and ending a little after 6 a.m. in the Ohio Valley.

The Sun enters Gemini on May 20, reaching a declination of 20 degrees and nine minutes, that’s almost 90 percent of the way to summer solstice.

Weather Trends

A Supermoon on May 25-26 will definitely bring frost to the northern tier of states and threaten the country to the 40th Parallel. Be ready to protect tender flowers and vegetables that you have set out in the mild days of middle May.

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. Watch for the cicadas to swarm during the next two weeks, buzzing in their mating frenzy.

Spring crickets sing and snapping turtles lay their eggs. Crappie fishing peaks in the shallows. Young squirrels are half grown. Locust flowers fall as the high canopy slowly closes in overhead. Black walnuts, silver olives and oaks become the other major sources of pollen.

Cedar waxwings migrate north as the last buckeye flowers fall. The first June bug clings to the screen door when the first firefly glows in the lawn and river grass is knee high.

Evergreens have four to six inches of new growth. Sycamore and ginkgo leaves are half size, and the rest of the maples fill in. Tall meadow rue and thistles have grown over the tops of your boot now in the wetlands and fields, pacing the angelica. Wild strawberries wander, bright yellow, through the purple ivy and the sticky catchweed.

 Mind and Body

The S.A.D. Index, which measures seasonal stress on a scale from 1 to 100, climbs slowly through the 20s into the low 30s this week. However, the waxing moon, full on the 26th, is the only force that might cause seasonal affective disruptions.

In the Field and Garden

In an average year, two-thirds of the region’s field corn has been planted, and almost half is emerged. Put in peppers, cantaloupes and cucumbers under the waxing moon, but be prepared to protect them from frost.

Farmers have normally planted four out of 10 soybeans by now. Almost all of the commercial potatoes are in the ground, along with half of the processing tomatoes. About a fifth of the winter wheat has headed in an average year.

Flea beetles come feeding in the vegetable garden when white clover blooms in the yard. Armyworms and corn borers are hard at work in the fields.

Journal: Finding the 17-Year Cicadas

 Entering woods at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, I made my way along the path above the river. About a hundred feet or so from the road, I saw one of the telltale brown hulls of the nymphs from which the adult cicadas of Brood X would emerge. I walked a little farther, found half a dozen nymph shells hanging to the underside of hickory and honeysuckle leaves, then more on buckeye, elm, garlic mustard and sweet Cicely.

Then I found the elusive magicicadas themselves. They were resting quietly all around, waiting for me. They were an inch or two in length. Their wings were shiny and gold, their eyes red, their bodies black.

I approached them slowly, carefully stepping off the trail and entering the inner sanctum of their habitat. I reached down and touched one on the back, then stroked its soft wings. The creature remained still, seemed completely unafraid and accepted my caress as though it had been expecting my curiosity.

I went deeper into the green waist-high world of touch-me-nots and nettle, and the cicadas allowed me to observe and handle them there, confident, perhaps, in their great numbers (my sources suggested there could be up to a million of them in the small forest glade I was exploring).

With only slight encouragement, one climbed up on my index finger and looked at me benignly while I studied its angelic wings, and wondered at its docility and its trust. In a week, I whispered to my guest, all of this soundless, contemplative, prepubescent innocence would be gone. He (if he were a he) would be mad with lust, loud and frantic, charging into trees and automobiles or plunging into the river. And she (if she were a she) would be watching, listening, waiting, loving the grand display.

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Copyright 2021  - W. L. Felker