The Canada thistles turned brown in the heat. The downy seeds blew loose from their flower heads and drifted across the old fields, a first emblem of the summer’s inevitable passing. Small, warty seed pods appeared on some milkweed plants, while others were still in flower. – David Rains Wallace

The Phases of the Moon

July 21: The Moon enters its second quarter

July 29: The Moon is full

In the Field and Garden

The peach harvest peaks throughout the Lower Midwest and East. About half the field corn is silking. Almost half of the soybean crop is in bloom, and summer apples are around a third picked.

In a relatively dry summer, more than three-fourths of the winter wheat has been cut by today. Elderberries are turning purple, and the second cut of alfalfa is almost always half complete.

Aphid infestations increase markedly on the farm and in the garden.

Farmers are getting ready for August seeding of alfalfa, smooth brome grass, orchard grass, tall fescue, red clover and timothy.

Set out autumn collards, kale, cabbage and broccoli. Check gourds and squash for beetles and rot.

THE 200th DAY

The first hundred days of the year move the center of Ohio through the seasons of Deep Winter Late Winter. And finally, at the end of March, into Middle Spring.

By the 100th day, April 10th, the landscape has entered its most benign period, even in the coldest years. When the fields are dry enough, farmers plant the first corn. Pastures turn purple with henbit, gold with dandelions. Winter wheat is bright green. Robins sing at 5 a.m., cardinals at 5:25 (Eastern Daylight Time).

In the gardens, daffodils, grape hyacinths and early tulips reach full bloom, replacing the crocus, aconites and snowdrops of February. Mulberry, locust, tree of heaven and ginkgo send out their first leaves. Pear trees and serviceberries blossom. Crab apples open. In the woods, Virginia bluebells, hepatica, periwinkle, toad trillium, cowslip, rue anemone and spring beauties are all in bloom.

Between the 100th day and the 200th day, the Lower Midwest completes Middle Spring, passes through Late Spring and Early Summer and then enters Deep Summer. By July 20th, the robins no longer sing before sunrise, and cardinals sleep late. Katydids and crickets fill the nights. Cicadas whine through the afternoons. The field corn is tall, the sweet corn and tomatoes are coming in, and the wheat harvest is complete.

Relatively few varieties of wildflowers bloom now under the dense canopy: leafcup, tall bellflower, wood nettle, touch-me-nots. The fields and fencerows show most of the color: bouncing bets, St. John’s wort, teasel, milkweed, gray-headed coneflowers, white vervain, wild lettuce, oxeye, germander, skullcap, great Indian plantain, blue vervain, wingstem, bull thistle, black-eyed Susans and small-flowered agrimony. In town, lilies and phlox have replaced daffodils and tulips; rose of Sharon flowers instead of pears and apples.

In another 100 days, on October 27th, most of the canopy will be gone. Middle and late summer, early fall and middle fall will have passed. The wildflower and garden seasons will be almost over. Witchhazel will be the only shrub in bloom.  Farmers will have cut their soybeans and their corn for grain. The birds and the cicadas will be silent; only the crickets and katydids will remember July.

Almanack Classics

The Junk Man’s Son

By Elizabeth Doren

When I was a child, life was simpler. If you needed money, you earned it. No allowance, no handouts, but plenty of jobs. Some were routine, like doing dishes, making your bed, cleaning your room, feeding the chickens, gathering the eggs, pulling weeds in the garden, and a dozen others that you were given by virtue of being a member of the family.

But in addition to these routine chores there were special nuggets of opportunity, where you worked for real money, and seemingly the sky was the limit of what you might make.

Back in those days a junk man came around every few months and paid real money for rusty nails and scrap metal of all sorts. Getting rid of rusty nails was a worthy end on a farm powered by horses.

I watched the procedure of taking care of a horse’s foot injured by stepping on a nail, in the days before penicillin. My father made a solution of disinfectants and treated the foot twice a day for weeks, or so it seemed to me. He picked up the horse’s foot, turned it bottom side up, cleaned it and bathed it with the pink strong-smelling disinfectant.

It worked, and the horse was soon back in harness, and we were paid a penny a pound by the junk man for all the rusty nails we collected around the farm. Some years later we heard that the junk man’s son had gone to law school. Our rusty nails traveled far.

(Elisabeth Doren wrote, painted, gardened and tended to children and libraries during her long life. It’s been many years since she passed away at the age of 94 and she is missed now more than ever.)

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Follow the summer with Bill Felker’s A Daybook for July 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