Poor Will's Almanack

The Sun’s powerful position in Cancer throughout the month is enhanced by the position of Sirius, the Dog Star, located almost due south at noon and contributing (according to tradition) to the Dog Days of Middle Summer. With all their heat, Cancer and Sirius ripen the landscape. Field corn is ready to tassel all along the 40th Parallel. Sweet corn and beans and tomatoes fill the farmers’ markets. Winter wheat is ready to be cut. Carrots and beets are ready to be pulled for supper. Broccoli has

At 10:36 in the morning of July 6, the Earth reaches aphelion, the point at which it is about 153 million kilometers (its greatest distance) from the Sun. Aphelion occurs almost exactly six months from perihelion, Earth’s position closest to the Sun (about 148 million kilometers). When one thing is happening, says the first law of phenology, something else is happening, too. Finches in the thistledown, cicadas calling through the day, katydids at night, all measure the Sun and pull the Dog Days

Inside the four common seasonal categories – winter, spring, summer, fall - lie clusters of small parallel seasons that measure time inside of time, creating by their colors and shapes and sounds and tastes and smells the broader temporal divisions. As June comes to a close, taking with it the longest days of Early Summer, the subseasons that follow solstice create a patchwork of interlocking phases of the landscape’s transformation. What might seem at first to just be “summer’ or the “Dog Days”

These are the longest days of the year, and Thursday the 21st is solstice, the peak of the solar tide, splitting Earth time in two, the Sun leaving Early Summer and Gemini, entering Deep Summer and Cancer. Obscured by daylight, the consellations that accompany the sign of Cancer during the day include Orion in the middle of the southern sky at noon, the potent Dog Star, Sirius, low behind him. Pisces lies in the west, Leo in the east, Draco in the north. Even though these stargroups may be

In Nature wrote the naturalist Donald Culross Peattie,nothing is insignificant, nothing ignoble, nothing sinful, nothing repetitious. All the music is great music, all the lines have meaning. So far deep into Gemini, I seek out the music. Looking for Deep Summer, I collect and collect more pieces of the season, watching them accumulate, none of them insignificant. And so I lay them out in my mind, building a daybook on which to place leaves, birdsong, butterflies until all the lines and spaces

By this moment in the year, when the Gemini Sun has almost completed its ascent to solstice...so many things are happening all around us...and we are, in a way, what we experience. And so here is our horoscope: White-spotted skippers, tiger swallowtails and red admirals sample the garden. Roses flower in the dooryards. Yucca stalks are big and tall. May apples have fruit the size of a cherry. Foxtail grass ripples by the side of the road. Shy scarlet pimpernel opens off the pathways. Bindweeds

The Daddy Longlegs Moon becomes totally full as it rises at dusk today. passing overhead throughout the night, cooling the evenings but still inviting walks and courting and memories in its light. As the Moon comes up shining in the east, Venus offers counterpoint as the giant evening star in the far west, and Jupiter, in Libra along the southern tree line, balances Polaris in the north. Under this Gemini sky, after peonies come in and the flowers of the yellow poplar open, past the decline of

The Sun climbs past a declination of 21 degrees 54 minutes by the end of May, a little more than 90 percent of the way to solstice. These are the longest days of the year – the highest solar tide on Earth The Sun entered the Early Summer sign of Gemini on May 20, and when the Sun reaches that constellation, then blackberries are flowering, and the last of the leaves come out for summer. Wild strawberries wander though the purple ground ivy and the sticky catchweed. Wild iris blooms in the

The Swarming Termite Moon, becoming the Daddy Longlegs Moon on today, May 15 at 6:47 a.m., waxes throughout the week ahead, reaching powerful perigee (its position closest to Earth) on May 17. Under the new and potent Daddy Longlegs Moon, the season of Late Spring deepens and, of course, daddy longlegs begin hunting in the undergrowth. Delicate damselflies hover in the swamps. Buckeyes and lilacs and garlic mustard come into full bloom. Yellow wood sorrel blossoms in the yard, daisies in the

My furnace is in the attic of my house, a place that is always warm in the coldest weather. During the later winter and early spring, I plant seeds under grow lights there: geraniums, petunias, castor beans, calla lilies, bananas, dahlias. The warmth of the lights and the air helps them to sprout, and the spring green of their leaves always makes me feel good. Last year when I did my attic gardening, I found a stink bug crawling around on the table where I do my planting. I had heard very bad