Poor Will's Almanack

Global projections are dire for the decades ahead, and for the region where I live in the Lower Midwest, it is likely that by 2030 summers will be a somewhat warmer and drier, springs a little earlier and wetter, autumns and winters milder. Tornadoes may be more frequent, as Tornado Alley moves east from Oklahoma. Other changes might be expected, however, and they will be due not only to weather events but also to cumulative habitat destruction and pollution. Studies suggest that is likely that

An Almanack horoscope suggests that the many seasons in the landscape of this time of year offer contrast and cheer to the darkening days. Early November marks the center of the Season of Second Spring: sweet Cicely, Virginia creeper, burdock, red clover, waterleaf, ground ivy, celandine, sweet rocket, dock and leafcup often revive and look ahead six months to Middle Spring. Deer Mating Season coincides with Witch Hazel Blooming Season, and the Season of Red Berries throughout the parks as

Throughout Middle and Late Fall, frogs and toads seek shelter from the coming cold, migrating to protective places underground, in water or in cracks and crevices that will keep them from the forces of Early, Deep and Late Winter Under the Sleeping Frog Moon, Christmas cacti bud in sunny windows. People plant paperwhite and amaryllis bulbs for the holiday season ahead. As toads and frogs migrate, chickweed grows back all along the woodland paths, and cress revives in pools and streams. Cattails

The Sun’s passage from Libra to Scorpio on Cross-Quarter Day October 23 opens the hinge of Middle Autumn and initiates the most dramatic period of leaf fall. Throughout this final stage of the natural year, the landscape becomes fully primed for the new signs and seasons to come. As the days shorten, the effects of the weakening sun are easily seen in the collapse of almost all the foliage. Smaller changes also offer measure of Scorpio. The low trills of the field crickets become slow, then rare

The canopy of leaves appeared solid throughout the hot summer, its entire nature dense and uniform, its shade thick and deep. Within a few days, that canopy will shatter deep into the jug of autumn. That jug, that earthen container takes it all. Everything from the whole year past goes into the jug of October. Events and objects get mixed up in the tumble. The smooth wall of June is torn apart. The heat of July and August is filtered and cooled. All of the long green horizon crumbles. The best

One summer a few years ago, I spent so much time sitting on the back patio just looking out into the garden. Every few days the blossoms of the shrubs and flowers changed. I filled the bird feeders every morning, and the birds rewarded my care with their presence. Lounging on the patio, I saw more butterflies than I ever had before, watched more bees than I had ever watched before – hover bees, carpenter bees, bumblebees, bee flies, and even a few honeybees. I loved it. “I’m at the beach,” I

Yesterday, I went walking, found seed heads everywhere, dry rose petals, red rose hips I should have pruned, withered hydrangea blossoms covered in spiderwebs, Joe Pye weed bushy and brown like the burdock beside it, three blue spiderwort flowers blossoming out of season, hops heavy across the euonymous, oodles of black redbud seeds like manes in the branches, the soft green seeds of the fierce wood nettle, new waterleaf leaves, mottled grape vines, red crab apples bigger than I'd ever noticed

This past weekend, I drove south through the full range of early fall, its different subseasons depending on the progress of the soybeans or corn or goldenrod or tobacco, depending on whether harvest complete or pending, depending on which trees were turning and how far. Sometimes, the specific time of year hinged on the number of fragile cottonwoods along the roadsides, or the advance of the violet Virginia creeper, or the number of fading box elders, catalpas, tulip trees, sycamores, crab

The time of early fall is an ambivalent time, a time of being on the edge. Summer is not really gone, but foliage is aging quickly and flowers are disappearing. The days may be warm and humid, but the sun is a March sun and could rise to frost on any morning. I experience a vague excitement now, am in suspense as to just when the wind will change, look forward to the cold, feel relief at the end of the Dog Days, but I also wish that the season did not have to change so quickly. And I enjoy lying

My Sunday morning is quiet and lazy. Clear sky, the air soft and mild. An occasional breeze follows the butterflies: a giant swallowtail, two monarchs, three yellow tiger swallowtails, four cabbage whites. The butterfly effect seems to move the floppy leaves of the castor beans and push the drifts of zinnias and cannas. The sidle of the flowers and foliage soothes me, and I allow my ultimate concerns to settle into the deep time of wings and blossoms. Sparrows gather on the ground around the