I stood there watching the wind ripple and wave through the grain, a sea of green animated with constant, unceasing movement, swirling about my waist as if alive, following no pattern of movement but waving now this way, now that, filled with an eternal surging restlessness, a great stirring of life, rustling in its undulations, and I thought of it as a symbol of life itself: the heavy heads holding the staff of life, bending and swaying in the warm south wind. – August Derleth

The Weather in the Week Ahead

Sunny skies are the rule for the last week of June: clouds dominate only about 20 percent of all the days, and that makes this period one of the brighter ones in the whole year. Daily chances of rain throughout this period of the month are 30 percent except on the 25th and 26th; those two days are some of the driest of the entire year, carrying only a 15 percent chance of precipitation. High temperatures rise into the 80s at least 60 percent of all the afternoons and climb above 90 on 20 percent of the days. Cooler conditions in the 70s or even the 60s are most likely to occur on the 23rd and 24th.

The Stars

Delphinus follows Cygnus in the east after 10 p.m., Altair, the bright star of Aquila shining below them. Just ahead of Cygnus, Vega leads the Milky Way west. Overhead, Arcturus moves into the western half of the sky, the Corona Borealis coming in to take its place. Libra lies due south, July’s Scorpius right behind it.

Early risers see the sky the way it will look on a late September night: the Milky Way overhead, the Great Square covering most of the southeast, huge Cygnus shifting west, following bright Vega. June’s Corona Borealis will be setting now, and the first sign of winter, Aldebaran of the constellation Taurus, will have just emerged in the northeast.

In the Field and Garden

Spray for potato leafhoppers, which are hopping in the alfalfa (and the potatoes). Find the corn borers eating corn. Rose chafers and two-spotted spider mites are active in your rose bushes. Cucumber beetles are destroying cucumber and melon vines. Japanese beetles are attacking almost everything.

Detassel corn, bring in the winter wheat, complete the first cut of alfalfa and start the second cut. And if your animals are reinfested with worms, consider worming every 17 days to three weeks or every three lunar phases to eliminate the parasites.

Water-plants in your garden pond can provide plant sales as well as beauty. However, be sure to protect them from your hungry fish.

Timely clipping, shearing and dipping can help keep your animals from blow-fly eggs as well as from ticks, lice and scab mites. Consider trimming the hooves of your pigs. You might also pave one portion of your yard as a hoof-filer. Untrimmed feet can breed infections.

The next marketing opportunity comes on United States Independence Day. After that, Jamaican Independence Day is Aug. 6, and Ecuadorian Independence Day is Aug. 10. Explore these opportunities to sell lamb and chevon.

Natural Calendar

Solstice marks the end of Early Summer in the Lower Midwest, but time is also space; movement and distance can take the season backward or forward, allowing what was and still will be to ride the hinge of the sun’s declination.

North in Maine, azaleas and columbine are still bright. Lupines hold in Bar Harbor. Foxglove and privet are budding in Bangor, strawberries just ripening. Through the valleys of Vermont, the wheat is deep green wheat (it’s golden-brown, almost ready to cut in Indiana). Parsnips are opening in New Hampshire as they go to seed in Tennessee. In upstate New York, catalpas are still flowering, and peonies are still in bloom.

The flora of the upper Midwest reaffirms the Late Spring and Early Summer of the Northeast. The blossoms of mock orange are still fragrant in Minneapolis. Multiflora roses and the petals of blackberries repeat Cincinnati May. Cottonwood cotton is drifting across the arboretum in Madison, Wis. The thistles are stronger, the hemlock fresher, cattails more delicate and flushed with pollen across the northern plains.

West in the Rocky Mountains, lupines are in full bloom at 4,000 feet, lilacs and early iris are coming in above 6,000 feet. Southern Ohio April appears in fields of dandelions and spring beauties at 7,000 feet. At 8,000 feet, the heartleaf arnica, like a yellow bloodroot, pushes Middle Atlantic time almost to the end of March.

Then down toward the Pacific, the landscape collapses forward toward a Yellow Springs June. From Tillamook to the ocean, cow parsnips, yarrow, moth mullein, yellow sweet cover, meadow goat’s beard, milkweed and great mullein line the roads.

ALMANACK LITERATURE

Old Bounce and the Copperhead

By Anna Monroe Bruce

Old Bounce was our dog. He loved to kill snakes. One day, dad and Brother James Lewis Monroe were over the mountain plowing and hoeing corn and cutting weeds about 10:00 a.m. when the dinner bell rang.

That was a signal from momma that the honeybees had swarmed. Dad told Lewis to take the horse and plow while he went to get the bees in a hive. As Lewis went around the long hillside plowing, I was behind with my hoe. There was a pretty good-sized flat rock lying in my row. I took the hoe and turned it around and down a piece and I saw a big snake’s head leap out.

I was scared and I called Old Bounce. Immediately he was there, sniffing and smelling. All at once out came the snake’s head again. It socked its poisonous fangs into Bounce’s jaw. All at once Bounce howled and with his nose and mouth plowed a ditch through the loose plowed ground about 25 feet and gave out another howl and headed for home howling all the time.

Brother Lewis heard him. He came running with the plow and mare. I had turned the stone over and killed a big copperhead snake. We hurried home over the mountain, and mom and dad had seen Bounce coming and knew he was snake bitten. They left the bees ‘til later, one hurried into the house, got a dish of turpentine and a little rag, while the other searched for the snake bite on his upper jaw.

When we got there, they were holding Bounce, and was he ever squirming, while the other was applying the turpentine to the snakebite wound. Every time momma put the rag back into the dish for more turpentine, it got green in the dish. Old Bounce lived, but for more than a week, his little head was swollen like a big bulldog’s. Both eyes were closed, and I had to feed and care for him until he was well as a punishment from my brother for letting it happen.

Follow the summer with Bill Felker’s A Daybook for June in Yellow Springs, Ohio. These daybooks contain all the nature notes used to create Poor Will’s Almanack. Order yours from Amazon.

Copyright 2026: W. L. Felker