We looked far across the valley, to the green fields and the green of woodlands and the shadow of valleys. The air vibrated with birdsong, which is the great rhythm made palpable to the ear. All the senses tingled, alive with the season as the world itself is alive. Nothing was impossible. High achievement was all around us, beating on every one of our senses for recognition. – Hal Borland

The Third Week of Late Spring

Watch for Honeybees to Swarm

In the Sky

Cassiopeia has moved deep into the northern night sky behind Polaris, the north star, by this time of May, and Cepheus, which looks a little like a house lying on its side, is beginning to come around to the east of Polaris. When Cepheus is due east of the North Star at night, then it will be the middle of July. When it lies due south of Polaris, then the leaves will be turning. When it lies due west of Polaris, it will be the middle of Deep Winter.

The Eta Aquarid meteors are active through May 28.

The Moons of May:

May 15: The Honeybee Swarming Moon enters its second quarter.

May 23: The moon is full.

May 30: The moon enters its final quarter.

Weather Trends

An average day in May’s second quarter brings rain 25 to 40 percent of the time. The mid-May cool front and the next two high-pressure systems are often followed by the Strawberry Rains, the wettest time of May in the lower Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic states. Typical highs almost always reach above 60 degrees after May 10, and they rise to 70 or above at least 60 percent of the afternoons. Full moon is likely to strengthen the cold front due from May 15-23. Be ready to protect tender plantings from frost.

Spring count

Twenty-three major spring cold fronts cross the nation between the middle of February and the last week of May. Three passed through in February, seven in March, six in April. In May, fronts will reach the lower Midwest around the following dates. They will come through about two days earlier in the West, a day or two later in the East. Between the last week of May and the first week of September, the 14 major cool fronts of summer cross the United States.

May 12: Although frost sometimes accompanies this weather system, the weather often stagnates between the May 12th front and the May 20th front, bringing on a mild heat wave – the first major such wave of the year.

May 15: This front and the next two are often accompanied by the “Strawberry Rains,” the wettest time of May.

May 20: Will you be able to plant? Will the Strawberry Rains ever end? Yes, by the middle of June.

May 24: This is usually the last frost-bearing front to northern gardens. It is the Last-Frost Moon of the year’s first half.

The Natural Calendar

Clustered snakeroot season starts in the new shade. Eastern wood pewees arrive. Northern spring field crickets hatch in milder years.

At least a third of the region’s goslings have been born. They will have all emerged by the end of the month. Fledgling grackles, sparrows and cardinals are leaving their nests and are begging for food in the honeysuckles. Goslings and ducklings swim the rivers. Lake carp and pond koi are mating.

The high canopy suddenly fills in. Flowering locust trees join mock orange, honeysuckle and late lilacs to create the most fragrant time of the year throughout the central portion of the United States. Under the closing canopy, spring’s garlic mustard, chickweed and catchweed die back, their yellow foliage accentuating a major decline of Middle Spring growth.

Bullfrogs call all along the rivers. Catfish, bullheads, northern pike, bluegills, largemouth and smallmouth bass, white bass, spotted bass, striped bass and crappies spawn when the water temperature reaches about 65 degrees.

Countdown to Summer 

• Just one week to strawberry pie 

• Two weeks until the first orange daylilies blossom

• Three weeks until roses flower

• Four weeks until the first mulberries are sweet for picking and cottonwood cotton drifts in the wind.

• Five weeks until wild black raspberries ripen

• Six weeks until fledgling robins peep in the bushes and fireflies mate in the night.

• Seven weeks until cicadas chant in the hot and humid days

• Eight weeks until thistles turn to down

• Nine weeks until sycamore bark starts to fall, marking the center of Deep Summer

• 10 weeks to the season of singing crickets and katydids after dark

In the Field and Garden

Orchard grass is heading, and a little alfalfa is budding. This is the center of pepper, cantaloupe, and cucumber planting, and the quarter mark for soybean seeding.

In the wood lots, eastern tent caterpillars are defoliating the cherry trees.  Spittlebugs appear on pine trees, azalea mites on azaleas, cankerworms on elms and maples, lace bugs on the mountain ash. Cutworms begin to attack many field and garden crops. Weevils build up in alfalfa. Flea beetles are in the corn. Bagworms and powdery mildew can be attacking the wheat.

Commercial sunflower planting time begins as the chances for a light freeze fall well below five percent along the 40th Parallel.

May 15 is a good target date for having fields planted in order to avoid a serious delay in seeding (as well as to take advantage of moisture for seed sprouting). 

The Allergy Index

Pollen from flowering trees usually peaks about May 10, but trees continue to be the major source of pollen in the air until grass pollen replaces it in the third week of the month. Mold counts often decline after the Strawberry Rains.

Estimated Pollen Count

(On a scale of 0 - 700 grains per cubic meter) 

May 10: 500      May 20: 250 May 31: 100

Estimated Mold Count

(On a scale of 0 - 7,000 grains per cubic meter)

May 15:1,100         May 20:  250 May 25: 150        May 31: 100

Almanack Literature

Guardian Angels on the Farm

A True Farm Story

by Stanley R. Pierce, Mio, Mich.

This event took place nearly a quarter century ago while I was living in a farm area east of Lansing, Mich.

My steady job was driving a truck for a wholesale lumber firm two days a week. In between, I was helping at random tasks when an extra man was needed on the farm.

One day we were topping off a silo after it had been filled a week earlier with corn silage. We were salvaging two rows that had been cut by hand to open the field for a tractor mounted field chopper. The silage had been tossed aside in loose bundles.

The owner had a lad about 15 years old helping part-time, too, and the boy was the designated tractor driver with a one-row front mounted chopper. For safety-sake, the outer feeding fingers mechanism was disengaged.

We had been working about a half hour, and I was gathering up a bundle about 40 feet from the chopper. As I straightened up, I noticed the lad standing very close to the machine and kicking at the stalks with his right foot. He was facing slightly toward me, and his expression was of fear.

I quickly dropped the armful of stalks and rushed forward to see if he was all right.

The latch on the lever that engaged the feeding fingers was sloppy, and it had slipped into gear. I could see its fingers were clawing on his pants leg at thigh level.

Here I should say that I was totally unfamiliar with the controls on the chopper. I estimated it would take at least a minute to get to the rear of the tractor and figure out how to throw that mechanism out of gear, and his leg could be pulled in where other fingers could get a hold too.

So, I grasped him around the waist and lifted him upward and back at least a foot to safety.

His only comment: “Aww, I was already just about loose!”

It surely didn’t look that way to me. The pants leg was torn in two places, and when he unbuckled his belt and let his pants down to see how much he was hurt, I could see a ragged scratch about six inches long with a little trickle of blood.

I had nightmares for quite a while after that, and I vowed that if that farmer ever asked me to help again in that or a similar operation, I’d want to be shown where the controls were to shut down rather than risk my safety too.

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