Poor Will's Almanack

The sun was bright all morning, and then wispy “mare’s tails” cirrus clouds filtered the sunlight and cooled the midday. Late Fall was due, with wind and rain. At about one o’clock, I looked into the back yard and saw one male goldfinch, half-gold, sitting alone on the perch of the finch feeder. The usual sparrows and chickadees were nowhere around. When I was about to go outside an hour later, I held back because the finch was still sitting at the feeder, and I became curious about his solitary

A few weeks ago I was walking through the alley around a quarter after nine in the morning. The maples were just turning then, the serviceberries and the hackberries half down. I could hear starlings and grackles ahead of me. And within minutes, I came under the cries and the rushing of a great flock. They knew where they were going: southeast, stopping in the branches above me for a just few seconds, calling to one another, looking out above the high canopy, then hurrying, diving on, one after

I was resting in my blue lawn chair in the afternoon sun, looking at the zinnias that had survived to this point in the autumn. Frost had been forecast for the night, but the afternoon was warm, no wind at all. One buzzard was drifting above me in the clear sky. Around the zinnias, flowers of the New England asters were gray, round tufts of seeds. Nursing a small kitchen glass of white wine, I watched for butterflies and bees. First came a silver-spotted skipper, inconspicuous brown, fitting

Middle Fall gives way to Late Fall by the end of the week. Most black walnut trees, hackberry, cottonwood, serviceberry trees and maples are bare now. The foliage of the ginkgo trees is ready to collapse in the frost. Flocks of grackles and geese fly over almost every day, all heading south. Starlings, in their winter murmurations, swoop and dive above the cutover fields. Still, against these autumnal signs, the final days of the year’s summer coincide with the first days of second spring, which

Several decades ago, I realized that strange things seemed to happen to me in the fall of the year. I seemed to lose my good sense, became more emotional and spastic. I wanted to try too many new things, and my judgement became even worse than it usually was. I called that combination of unusual excitement and blind stupidity the autumn surge. I have done some impulsive things at different time of my life during that surge, but perhaps the most bizarre was to become a door to door fuller brush

The leafturn and leafdrop of Middle Fall accelerate with the prospects for frost, and the relative stability of early October comes apart. By the end of the week, most of the ashes, buckeyes, box elders, and black walnuts will be close to gone. Foliage barriers around your property may disappear completely. Shagbark hickory, chinquapin oak, tree of heaven and great shrub-like pokeweeds are thinning out. There is a steady drizzle of locust leaves. Elms, sweet gum, sassafras, sycamores, and

I wrote my recent annual almanack as a horoscope in nature. The word horoscope comes from two Greek words, hora, which means hour or time, and skopos, which means observer. The time observer is a horoscoper, and for the horoscoper who watches the seasons, an “almanack horoscope in nature” can offer a useful guide to the galaxy as well as to one’s own neighborhood. In The Emerald Tablet, an ancient text by Hermes Trismegistus, the author attempts to explain the astrological mysteries of the

Driving south toward the river valley, I head into an autumn thunderstorm. The soybeans are yellow, and the corn is old. Most black walnut trees are bare, fruit exposed and swinging in the rain. Small white asters and goldenrod are in late bloom; chicory is still open. The breeze is steady but gentle from the southwest, leaving intact the haze across the valley. Buzzards circle. Poplars are weathered, the raindrops darken the remaining green, brighten the patches of yellow on the Osage. Queen

The days continue clear and bright. Two weeks ago, much of the landscape was still deep, late-summer green. Now, a few maples and dogwoods are orange, or red. Cottonwoods and catalpas and sweet gums and shagbark hickories are yellow. Grape vines and nettles are bleached with age. Locust leaves drizzle steadily to the undergrowth. The serviceberries are almost bare. The black walnut trees keep only their last fruit. Purple poison ivy and Virginia creeper outline the changes. In yards and gardens,

For a number of years, I have marked the position of the Sun on a wall in a certain room of my house, noting how it not only moves throughout the day, but also how it moves with the seasons. I have followed that practice, sometimes doing it to tell the time of year (although it can do that as well as any calendar), but mostly because of the way it makes me feel. Paying attention to where and when the sunlight comes through my window helps me to feel cared for. Strangely, it makes me feel like I