Rain and wind gusting.... The landscape was transformed. Only a touch of color remained here and there, the hills were austere and dark. Autumn was blown away like a shroud of dust, the earth was uncovered to the sky. – Harlan Hubbard

The Fourth Week of Late Fall

The Moon, Sun and Stars

The Goose Gathering Moon, new on the 23rd at 5:57 p.m., reaches powerful perigee, its position closest to Earth, on the 25th. It enters its final phase on Nov. 30 at 9:37 a.m. Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, this moon passes overhead, its most favorable time for fish and game activity, around the middle of the day.

On Nov. 22, the sun entered the Early Winter sign of Sagittarius and reached within two degrees of solstice at the same time. At the end of November, sunset has reached to within just a few minutes of its earliest time throughout the nation.  The latest sunrise, however, is still about half an hour away.

In the dark, Orion becomes unmistakable now as early winter approaches, and Sirius and Procyon follow him out of the southeast after midnight. Aries is high in the center of the sky this week, a little west of Perseus. And the summer stars have almost disappeared. August’s Vega is setting. Cygnus, the swan of the Northern Cross, and the gauge of autumn’s progress, is disappearing south. October’s Pegasus and Andromeda fall away behind it.

Weather Trends

This year the Nov. 24 front coincides with a strong moon (new and so close to perigee), a coincidence that suggests this second-last front of the month could be more disruptive than usual during the Thanksgiving period. Chances of an afternoon in the 70s are now only one in one hundred; on March 2, they rise again.

Nov. 25 is the date of the latest recorded killing frost along the 40th Parallel in the Lower Midwest.

The last cold front of November is almost always strong, and it typically brings rain and gloom to the South and snow to the North. It also brings a chance of freezing temperatures into the Gulf States and the Carolinas.

Zeitgebers: Events in Nature that Tell the Time of Year

In a moderate autumn, a few snapdragons and yarrows can still be budding. The dead nettle still has blossoms. Basal leaf clusters grow back on carnations, sweet rockets, chickweed, henbit, celandine, garlic mustard, poppies, lamb’s ear and daisies. Until the hardest frost, St. John’s wort, lavender, butterfly bush, euonymus and Japanese honeysuckle keep their leaves. The mint is still fragrant. Parsley and thyme are still green and firm for seasoning.

A secondary rutting period for deer begins near the end of November and lasts until early- to mid-December. Early sprouting winter wheat could bring deer to those tender green shoots. Staghorn sumac fruit clusters can also be very attractive to game.

 

In the Field and Garden 

All the major harvest is usually complete; fall seeding should be finished. The garden’s pretty-well picked clean, and the cover crops have sprouted. The Christmas tree harvest has begun, and the last poinsettias have come north.

On the farm, it’s time to plug in the electric bucket heaters and try to keep the water near 50 degrees for pregnant livestock. Maintain good ventilation in the barn and watch for stress from overcrowding. Keep on the lookout for pneumonia in your animals.

Around the yard, stake young shrubs and trees. Wrap young transplants to protect them against frost cracking and rabbits. Parsley and thyme should be brought inside pots for winter seasonings.

Mind and Body

Thanksgiving opens the six-week holiday season in the United States, a difficult time for some, a festive family period for others. Adding to the complexity of late November through December, leaf fall is virtually complete, and temperatures, which may have moderated in an “Indian Summer,” become much colder. In most years, clouds become more frequent, and increasing wind speed approaches winter levels. All these factors mean S.A.D. rises with the moon throughout the period, remaining in the harsh 90s for several days.

 

Journal

Now the inventory of the neighborhood year rests on a count of the remaining leaves on trees or plants, the breakdown of the fallen leaves, the subtlety of the last colors, the coming apart of seed heads, the disappearance of berries.

The silver maples and the oaks thin out. Forsythia turns deep red and gold from frost. Poplars shrivel. Most mock orange leaves and most of the lilacs are gone. Sometimes half the ginkgo seeds hang on above the golden skirt of their fallen foliage; often they have all come down.

Late Fall deepens with rust overtaking most of the beech tree on Dayton Street; red and gold are spreading through the pears. Osage fruits are almost all on the ground, stand out chartreuse, at random, in the tangle of the undergrowth. Cypress trees have thinned, their branches a delicate web against the sky. Pink coralberries glow in the hedges. Bittersweet berries crack and reveal their softer cores. The foliage of black-eyed Susans is gray, flower petals gone, centers so black. Silver olive leaves have fallen.

There are red berries on the flowering crabs, on the dogwoods, and on the hawthorns, on the honeysuckles, on the bayberry, red hips on the roses, bittersweet hulls on the sidewalk, white exteriors of euonymus berries splitting, revealing the orange cores. Stems of salvia have exploded from the cold. Hostas dissolve into the soil.

Garden lettuce, rhubarb and comfrey are prostrate in the cold. Hydrangea and mock orange leaves are curled and blackened. Finches work the sweet gum trees, digging out the seeds from their hollows. The last daddy longlegs huddle together woodpiles and brambles. Late woolly bear caterpillars, most of them dark orange and black, still emerge in the sun. Juncos arrive for winter. In the mornings, robins peeping all around the village. Geese continue to gather at the pond.

The oakleaf hydrangeas are becoming dusky purple, and the goosefoot foliage in the garden is a blend of gold and yellow and red and violet. New leafcup foliage is a foot tall now beside lush sweet rocket and hemlock. Some purple deadnettle is budding.

Christmas cactus blossoms and aloe spikes rise to bloom in the early December greenhouse. Paperwhites send up their foliage. Foliage from sweet Cicely, chickweed, sweet rockets, waterleaf, cinquefoil, violet cress, hemlock, parsnip, avens and next September’s zigzag goldenrod in a defiant show of Second Spring.

Almanack Literature

A Surprise Package

By Bob Christianson, Salvisa, Ky.

Something was getting baby chicks, leaving no trace, no feathers, in the brooder house.

There was a rat-hole sized knothole in the wooden flooring, so my dad lifted the board, put a steel trap in place, covered it carefully, and left it for a few days. The trap got tripped, and when Dad pulled it out, it was not a rat but a long, well-fed 5-6-foot black snake. VERY crabby about having his middle pinched for a few days.

My dad put this fellow in a burlap gunny sack and directed my older sister to take it to the woods about a half a mile away and release him.

Now at this time, my sister was fascinated by and played with harmless snakes all the time, until she got out of the country two-room school to “town” high school and subsequently came to the realization that “ladies” did not play with snakes.

Now it was a HOT day in August on the western Missouri prairie, too hot to walk all the way to the woods, I guess. She had a better idea: into the hot galvanized mailbox went the snake.

About this time, I came in from disking after my dad. As soon as I pulled in for lunch, my sister ran out and told me that she had seen the mailman go by. I pedaled down the lane on my 24- inch bike, pulled up to the box, pulled down the lid, and yep, SURPRISE TIME! For me AND the snake. He was not too interested in looking at my face, as he drew back and instantaneously struck at me.

I was pretty quick, and I didn’t wait to see if he wanted any further ownership of the hot mailbox. I was pedaling up the hill as fast as I could, looking with vengeance in my eye for my older sister.

Luckily, I guess today, she was faster at 11 that I was at 8. Mom didn’t understand my “but Mom…she put a SNAKE in the mailbox,” and she threatened Grandpa’s razor strap on me if I did not abate the chase. Real story.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S 

SCKRAMBLER

 NAIRB BRAIN

INAPS SPAIN

EANW WANE

INAV VAIN

NIEV VEIN

ENVA VANE

INARD DRAIN

NIRAG GRAIN

ANITNCO CONTAIN

PAENGCHMA CHAMPAGNE

ANIRSP SPRAIN

THIS WEEK’S RHYMING 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. Yes, you are a genius.

WOHRT

OREHT

ETO

WOT

EGOROF

REFONKWO

OH-EHHIG

LELOH

OOEB

OOWRGTU

EOUPLT

Copyright 2022 – W. L. Felker