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Northern hemisphere almost three-fourths way to summer

May 3-9, 2010

The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes
-Barry Lopez, Crossing Open Ground

Lunar phase and lore

Entering its final quarter at 11:15 a.m. May 5, the Rhubarb Pie Moon gives up all its early rhubarb and becomes the Duckling and Gosling Moon at 8:04 p.m. May 13. The waning moon will favor all kinds of perennial, shrub and tree transplants this week, the setting out of strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry and current plants, and the seeding of root crops directly into the ground.

The moon will be overhead after sunrise this week, so get up early and fish as you watch it move into the western sky. May 7 will be especially favorable for angling, since a cold front will be approaching; after that front passes through, take a day off, then get back on the water by May 12, and let the south wind blow your bait into the fishes’ mouth.

It’s Big Breakfast Week, thanks to the moon: if you have a balanced morning meal with plenty of protein, carbohydrate and even a little fat, you should be able to resist the moon, which will be above you between sunrise and noon, telling you to eat a dozen frosted or chocolate doughnuts.

If you work in health care or law enforcement, trade shifts with someone for May 13, new moon day. (Go fishing, be gardening or just walk in the woods.) The odds for sickness and crime all rise at new and full moons.

Orion finally sets at sundown this month, followed by Gemini in the far west, bringing frost season to a close throughout most of the United States. The Big Dipper, deep overhead after dark, is in its late spring position, bringing all the clovers into bloom along the 40th Parallel. In the east, the Summer Triangle is rising, promising the heat and harvest of August.

Weather patterns

Mild days between the first and second May fronts (May 2 and 8) bring out the tomato and bean plants to the garden, but there is a slight possibility of a return of Lilac Winter between May 8-12. In fact, frost occurs more often on the morning of May 8 than on any other day in May: it strikes 20 percent of all the years. But the sun shines 85 percent of the time, making May 8 one of the brighter days of the month.

Chances for rain are only one in four, and that makes May 8 one of the two driest days of the month (May 16 is the other prime day for field and garden work). After May 10, chances for frost fall below 5 percent per day through the first week of June, after which they completely disappear.

Daybook

May 3: As conditions permit, sow seeds for forages that will provide as close to year-round grazing as possible: tall fescue, ryegrass, wheat, oats and rape for early spring; Kentucky bluegrass and orchard grass for spring and fall; bromegrass and timothy for early summer; and birdsfoot trefoil, Bahia grass, Bermuda grass, Sudan grass, crabgrass and lespedeza for mid- to late summer.
Schedule your seeding of turnips in middle summer for late fall and early winter grazing.

May 4: Silver olive bushes come into bloom, just when sweet gum, mountain maples and white mulberry trees flower. In the woods, wild strawberries and bellwort have golden blossoms. Poppies and daisies open in the garden.

Spring pasture now reaches its brightest green of the year, and haying is under way in the southern states. The cutting will move toward the Canadian border at the rate of about 100 miles a week, and it will be taking place almost everywhere by the middle of June.
May 5: Johnson grass, Sudan grass, sorghum and alfalfa can change their chemical composition when the night brings a late spring frost. Be alert for signs of a negative reaction in your sheep and goats if they are grazing the morning after a freeze.

May 6: Major planting of peppers, cantaloupes and cucumbers is taking place when you see spitbugs hang to the parsnips. Canadian thistles are budding then, too.

May 7: In the garden, yellowwood sorrel and the scarlet pimpernel are flowering. In the woods, oblivious to the possibility of cold, golden seal and Solomon’s seal are blooming. Rhododendrons fill with color as locusts, black walnut trees and oaks come into flower.
May 8: Weevils are building up in alfalfa now, and cutworms have moved into your fields. Tent caterpillars appear on ash, birch, maples, oak, poplar, sweet gum and wild cherry: this is the time to control them.

May 9: Knee-high parsnips blooming tell you that the soybeans are often one-third planted and that the radish harvest is under way. When all that happens, look for indigo buntings in the undergrowth. And when the first corn is three inches high, then the first young blue jays will be emerging from their eggs, and all the oats will be sown. Orchard grass should be ready to harvest.

Countdown to early summer

On May 9, the sun reaches three-quarters of its way to summer solstice. Between this date and Aug. 5, the nation enjoys the longest and sunniest days of the year. Now the progress to summer slows from approximately 5 percent per week to about half that.
By May 21, the sun reaches a declination of 20 degrees, 9 minutes; that’s almost 90 percent of the way to summer solstice.

With the moon due to turn new on May 13, get ready to plant soybeans, not to mention corn and all the garden vegetables that will produce their fruit aboveground. The period between May 10-20 will be the last of the best lunar planting windows of the spring for flowers, as well as for field and garden crops that produce their fruit above the ground.

4/29/2010