Now do ye dream of Spring when greening shaws

Confer with the shrewd breezes, and of slopes

Flower-kirtled, and of April, sweetling guest…. – Siegfried Sassoon

The Moon in October

The Moon is new on Oct. 22

The Moon enters its second quarter on Oct. 29

The Morning and Evening Stars of October

Venus in Virgo and Mars in Libra are the morning stars. They remain in the daytime sky until evening when they can be seen as the evening stars. Jupiter in Gemini follows Orion across the sky, appearing in the east before dawn.

The Weather in the Week Ahead

Highs are usually in the 50s or 60s, with the odds for 70s near one in five. The danger of frost remains similar to that of the third week in October; about one night in three receives temperatures in the upper 20s or lower 30s. But by this late in the season, the chances of a hard freeze have risen past 50 percent, and the odds get better each night for killing lows.

This week is generally a brighter one than last week. Chances of sun are about 70 percent throughout the period, and some of the driest October days are the 26th, 28th and 29th (each having just a 15 percent chance of precipitation).

The sixth high-pressure system of the month usually arrives near Halloween. If it is approaching on the 31st, that evening will be warm, with maybe a little rain. If the front arrives on the 29th or 30th, the eve of All Saints Day is usually brisk

Journal

Often in this warm last week of October, I sat in the backyard and looked up at Lil’s maple, full orange-gold, and at the round, clear sky through the opening in my plantings.

Jill and I had just returned from a trip to my nephew’s wedding in Lincoln, Neb. We had driven 1,600 miles across great beige plains shorn of their corn and soybeans, and under chilly sun and big sky, and in steady, hard wind.

It was good to be home. I was tired, and I rested next to the last purple asters in the garden, the one cabbage white butterfly, the bees still active, the one monarch butterfly that suddenly appeared.

Here the sky was contained, a porthole through the suburban landscape. We had seen few birds on our four-day trip, but sitting in the yard, I could watch a vulture watching me, sailing in and out of my window. Small birds passed above me, so high that I had trouble seeing their silhouettes.

They appeared alone or in widely separated pairs or in clusters of maybe half a dozen. They might have been swallows hunting insects, but I couldn’t be sure. They might have been migrating, but they seemed, like the buzzard, to be moving too erratically or circling like sandhill cranes sometimes do when they wait for the next crane cohort to catch up with them over Yellow Springs.

Framed by my location and limited perspective, the birds seemed mine. No longer lost in the infinite horizon of Iowa and Nebraska, they and I belonged here. This glimpse of natural history through a tiny looking glass was more revealing than the vast options of outer space beyond my yard. Here I could see enough.