Tall ironweed blooms

All around us, purple-blue clusters

Blazing atop stalks six feet tall…. – Ann Filemyr

The Moon: The Blackberry Moon, entered its final quarter on the 8th, wanes until it becomes the Sweet Peach Moon on Aug. 16. Rising in the dark and setting in the afternoon, this moon passes overhead in the middle of the day.

The Sun: In August, the sun moves halfway between summer solstice and autumn equinox, entering Virgo and reaching Cross-Quarter Day on Aug. 23.

The Stars: Find the Milky Way in the eastern night sky. Cygnus the swan is there, too, its formation like a giant cross. Below it, Aquila, spreads from its main star, Altair, like a great eagle. Almost directly overhead, Vega is the brightest star in the heavens.

The Shooting Stars: The Perseid meteors peak August 11-13 in the east an hour or so after midnight below the Milky Way in Perseus. This shower can produce up to 60 meteors in an hour and will not be obscured by the moon.

Weather Trends: Morning lows are typically in the 60s, although one fourth of the nights carry temperatures into the middle 50s. The advance of the cold is seen first in the nighttime statistics, and then, not long afterward, in the percentage of lower daytime temperatures.

Aug. 10 is the average date for a major cool front 50 percent of the years on record, and on both Aug. 9 and 11, there is a 10 percent chance of high temperatures only in the 60s.

On Aug. 13, lows fall into the 40s 15 percent of the time – that’s the highest percentage since June 24, making yet another small step toward winter.

The Natural Calendar: Morning fogs thicken and become more frequent as the night air cools more often into the 50s and below. Touch-me-nots are still in full bloom, tall bellflowers strong and blue, burdock holding beside the oxeye, bouncing bets, new six-petaled wild cucumbers, the yellow and the blue flowered wild lettuce, the bull thistle, virgin’s bower, tall nettle, prickly mallow, small woodland sunflower, soft velvetleaf, sundrops and heal all in full flower. Along the rivers, bur marigolds, zigzag goldenrod and broad-leafed swamp goldenrod are budding. Water horehound, willow herb, wood mint and swamp milkweed are still open.

Damselflies still hunt by the water. Starlings become more restless as the days grow shorter. Changes may soon be occurring at bird feeders, since migration of cedar waxwings, catbirds, Baltimore orioles and purple martins is likely to accelerate with each new weather system. At night, the cricket and katydid chorus intensifies.

In the Field and Garden: Midwestern peaches are typically at their best. Farmers bring in corn for silage, dig potatoes, pick commercial tomatoes and finish the second or third cut of alfalfa hay. Gardeners gather up the winter squash as their stems dry, leaving about two inches of stem on the fruit. Berry and grape pickers make juice and wine and jelly from elderberries and wild grapes.

Keep carrots, oats, bran, iodized salt and good greens on hand to invigorate bucks as the breeding season opens. But keep male goats away from the legumes later in the season; that form of feed may cut down on fertility.

Mum and pansy time is here for the autumn mum and pansy market. Then it’s time for the fish harvest; make tilapia fingerlings available for sales to homesteaders, preppers or hobbyists. If you don’t have tilapia in your pond, explore purchasing them and breeding them in a fish tank over the coming winter.

The major months of seasonal change – September, December, March and June – are excellent times to set up a vaccination schedule for your livestock. Changes in the season bring weather extremes as well as stress, so you will be taking care of routine health care at the most important times of the year.

Mind and Body: Even though the summer may be hot and humid and seemingly endless, its stability is deceptive. Sometimes the Aug. 10 cool front is especially chilly, breaking the stagnation of the Dog Days. Sometimes leaf miners lace the locust trees, creating patches of gray and brown in the tree line. Sometimes a few maples turn red and stand out like the hand of October from all the other trees of August. Bird calls have changed, and migrations are more apparent as flocking becomes more common. These and so many other events actually change the texture of your moods and attitudes, preparing you for the radical transformation of the months ahead.

Almanack Literature

Defensive Feeding

By Cathy O’Kane

We have the tiniest little brown ants in the house just now. Not that many, but they are in the kitchen wandering about. And for the last two days they have been scurrying down into my computer keyboard, into the impossibly small spaces between the keys and the keyboard. I also see them wandering along the pile of papers to my left. I watch to see if I can figure out where they are going to or coming from, to no avail. They are just here. I cannot imagine what they have to eat as there are no candies on my desk or crumbs of food.

Tonight, I had to dance around them on the keyboard. So, I decided to feed them and see what happened. I put a little maple syrup on a piece of paper in front of the keyboard and sure enough, they found it. Then, through some means of communication that is beyond me, they told their friends and family, who have been coming to sample the maple.

What started as two on the keyboard turned to 50. They sit around the maple, all prim and proper, and eat. They do not elbow each other, or throw their food, or fight. They share nicely, as if they are at a state dinner. Various ones show up from who knows where and then they eat, too.

And they prefer the syrup to my keyboard!

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S SCKRAMBLER

COKL LOCK

CKOLC CLOCK

KOCMS SMOCK

OLKCF FLOCK

KCOH HOCK

COSK SOCK

CKLBO BLOCK

OPKC POCK

CKOR ROCK

NOCKK KNOCK

THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER 

LABSILCIT

CTIPSE  

EIPPTC  

CATIT  

CCTTIA  

CITLAC  

CITCEH  

LOHCITCRA

POTCI

TCLIASP

In order to estimate your SCKRAMBLER IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find a typo, add another 15 points to your IQ. Yes, you are a genius.

Copyright 2023 – W. L. Felker