The air sizzles with insect song. Crickets and grasshoppers warn and wook, rubbing their musical legs. They make the sound of beans rolling in a pan, tiny bells ringing on the ankles of dancers, fingers raked over the teeth of combs, waves rolling cobbles on the shore. – Scott Russell Sanders

The Phases of the Moon

Aug. 12: The Field Cricket Moon is new.

Aug. 19: The Moon enters its second quarter.

Aug. 26: The Field Cricket Moon is full.

The Sun

As August begins, the sun begins to speed up its descent to equinox. By the start of the second week of August, it will be one third of its way to autumn.

The Weather in the Week Ahead

This week’s highs: 50 percent of the afternoons are in the 80s, 25 percent in the 90s and another 25 percent in the 70s. Rainfall is typically light, with the 9th, 12th, 13th and 14th carrying just a 10 to 15 percent chance of a shower. With the arrival of the Aug. 10 cold front, however, the 10th and 11th have a 40 percent chance of precipitation as well as the slight possibility of a high only in the 60s for the first time since July 13. The 10th through the 14th are likely to bring evening lows below 60 degrees. And within the next seven days, lows reach into the 40s 15 times more often than they do during the first week of August.

Natural Calendar

Beggarticks unfold their small golden flowers at this stage of Late Summer, coming into bloom as Judas maples become more common. Hickory nuts lie on the woodland paths. Buckeyes are completely formed. The panicled dogwood foliage reddens a little, its berries green.  Acorns are full size, a few even a rusty brown.

Purple pokeweed berries shine through the undergrowth. Burrs of the tick trefoil catch on your pants legs. White vervain is gone, and the flowers of blue vervain climb to the top of their spikes, measuring the end of warmest time of year. Fields of brilliant oxeye, coneflower, goldenrod, wingstem and ironweed hide the decay of Canadian thistles, fringed loosestrife, skullcap, wild petunias and meadow rue.

Phlox and resurrection lilies and gladiolus flowers disappear quickly. Golden showy coneflowers have begun their three-week process of decay, and the once menacing ragweed is becoming old and empty. Along highways, the umbels of Queen Anne’s lace, so bright through Deep Summer, are contracting and darkening.

Telephone wires fill with birds as migrations accelerate. Flickers, redheaded woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, house wrens, scarlet tanagers, Eastern bluebirds, robins, grackles and black ducks move south. Bees work harder. Spiders weave more webs. Grackles and starlings become louder in the afternoons, but an entire morning can go by without a cardinal song or the sound of a dove.

In the Field and Garden

Everbearing strawberries and watermelons ripen; summer apples are half picked, and tobacco is often topped on two out of three of all the plots along the Ohio River. In average years, peaches are at their best throughout the Midwest. The first soybeans are turning, and most are setting pods. The harvest of winter wheat and oats is complete throughout the nation. Farmers bring in corn for silage, dig potatoes, pick tomatoes and finish the second cut of alfalfa hay. This is the beginning of lawn seeding time, and the time for band seeding alfalfa on the farm. Smooth brome grass, orchard grass and timothy are also planted now.

ALMANACK LITERATURE

The Persistent Possum

By Eugenia Herrmann

Redkey, Ind.

One morning I found a dead possum draped in the entrance of the cat door of my garage. I am a wuz when it comes to dead animals, but I managed to get the body on a shovel, and I carried it out near a corncrib, hoping a buzzard would find it. I told my tenant about it that evening.

Two mornings later, what do I find but the possum draped in the doorway again. I could not believe my eyes. As it happened, my tenant stopped by, so he picked up the body and took it out to a field. We both laughed, startled that a dead possum would show up for the second time.

However, the next morning, I almost went into total shock. The possum was back. Draped in the same position as the day before. This time, I called the tenant saying, “You are not going to believe this but….”

Here came my now exasperated tenant saying that this time he would bury it. I already had an open hole, so it became an ideal burial plot. His statement was, “Well, if it comes back this time, it really WILL be a miracle.”

Our only conclusion is that one of my cats dragged the body to the garage each time. Whether she actually killed it, we will never know. The final irony to the “burial” was that each of my other cats paid their respects by sitting on the grave for a few minutes.