Crickets still sing, pansies still bloom, despite colder weather

If you are afflicted with melancholy at this season, go to the swamp and see the brave spears of skunk cabbage buds already advanced toward a new year.... See those green cabbage buds lifting the dry leaves in that watery and muddy place.... They see over the brown of winter’s hill. They see another summer ahead. — Henry David Thoreau

The Moon in November

Nov. 20-21: The moon is new

Nov. 28: The moon enters its second quarter

The Weekly Weather

The fourth week of November, the third week of late fall, is the stark and windy week that marks the decline of average highs below 50 degrees and the end to any reasonable chance of a day above 70 throughout the lower Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states. Nights below zero even become possible. The sixth cold front of the month, arriving around the 24th, often brings rain on the 23rd (there is a 50 percent chance of that). The seventh high-pressure system generally arrives on Nov. 28, preceded by rain 70 percent of the time on the 27th – the wettest day in the month’s weather history. The 28th, 29th and 30th have the best odds of the month for snow. After the 25th, the percentage of cloudy days almost doubles over the average for the rest of November.

 Autumn lingering

All but a few shriveled staghorns have fallen from the sumac at the end of late fall. Thistles are bedraggled, foliage curled and shriveled. Fields of dry goldenrod heads glow in the sun, more exotic than when they were in flower. Box elder seeds shimmer in the frost. Sharp burdock burrs are poised, waiting for you to brush against them.

Fed by honeysuckle berries, robins linger in town and in the woods. Starlings cluck and whistle at sunrise, and cardinals and pileated woodpeckers and bobwhites sing off and on throughout the day. Finches work the sweet gum tree fruits, digging out the seeds from their hollows. Sparrow hawks appear on the fences, watching for mice in the bare fields.

In spite of all the cold, pansies still bloom, and scattered mums still keep their color. Mulched parsley, carrots, beets, potatoes, chard, broccoli, kale and chives can still be brought in from the vegetable garden. Once in a while, dandelions blossom, appear out of season like overwintering robins, stragglers showing up through the fall and winter. Wild onions and the garden garlic grow a bit when the weather is mild. Motherwort is still strong.

Crickets still sing in the warmest evenings, and the last daddy longlegs huddle together in the woodpile, waiting for their corners to warm. Mosquitoes still wait for prey near backwaters and puddles. Late woolly bear caterpillars, most of them dark orange and black, still emerge on backroads when the asphalt is hot from the sun. Cabbage moths still look for cabbage. Yellow jackets sometimes come out to look for fallen fruit. Squirrels chatter. Opossums and raccoons increase their activity in the warmer evenings. Deer are mating. Sparrows fight for seeds. Crows congregate for winter.

Journal

Among the first observations I remember making about nature as a child was that the wind seemed to be caused by the trees moving and that green leaves brought on summer. It soon became apparent to me, of course, that the reverse was true. Events in nature were the result of causes quite distant from their effects. The wind was the product of planetary and even cosmic forces, and the green leaves of summer grew from a cycle that began in deep winter or even millennia before, offspring of the evolution and migration of plants.

As I get older and watch myself in nature, I have started to see that my first notes about the world were not so far off as I assumed. I find that distant energies are less relevant and less useful than my scientific understanding once led me to believe. In fact, my emotional and spiritual life is more closely tied to appearances than to physical events.

Late Fall in my thoughts and in my feelings is the clear reflection of the things I see. The changes in the landscape produce changes in my mind. The Earth’s fluctuating relationship with the sun may technically cause the advent of winter, but it is the bare trees and the frost that make the season in my head.

Very literally, the green trees bring June to my brain. The Osage fruits, full size, fallen in the rain, bring the middle of August, and the sudden collapse of the sugar maple canopy is the messenger of November.

Almanack Literature

Chickens!

By Jack Thomas, Milan, Ind.

Back in 1943, when World War II was raging, meat, rubber and gas were rationed, along with a few other things. To offset some of the things you couldn’t get, you raised things like chickens. My uncle raised chickens, about 300 of them, and then he sold them to the people around him.

One dark night with no Moon out, he heard the dogs barking. He got up and looked out the window but didn’t see anything except that the door to the chicken house was open. He grabbed his shotgun and went out to see what was going on. All he had on were his longjohns with the trapdoor down.

He proceeded to the chicken house with his shotgun. When he got to the door, he looked in. In the meantime, his old hound dog was following him. When my uncle stopped at the door, the old hound dog stuck his cold nose in that open trapdoor.

As you can imagine, that shotgun went off, and killed half of his chickens. He got us all up and we picked chicken the rest of the night.