A year-to-year record of this order is a record of the rates at which solar energy flows to and through living things. They are the arteries of the land. By tracing their responses to the sun, Phenology may eventually shed some light on that ultimate enigma, the land’s inner workings. – Aldo Leopold, A Phenological Record for Sauk and Dane Counties, Wis., 1935-1945 (1947)

The Moon

Nov. 7: The moon is full

Nov. 13: The moon enters its final quarter

Nov. 20-21: The moon is new

Nov. 28: The moon enters its second quarter

Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 2. Set clocks back one hour at 2 a.m.

Weekly Weather

The chances of warmth in the 70s drop to just 5 percent on November 4th, and odds increase for cold throughout the week ahead. Highs just in the 30s or 40s were relatively rare during the final days of October, but by the 5th of November, they occur 25 percent of the time, and chances rise to over 40 percent by the 10th of the month.

The coolest days in this period are typically the 6th and the 7th, both of which have only about a 15 percent chance of warmth in the 60s. The 3rd ushers in the snow season for the central states, flurries or accumulation emerging into the realm of possibility, at least a 10 percent possibility per day between that date and spring.

Chances of a thunderstorm virtually disappear until February in the lower Midwest, but all-day rains increase. The first 10 days of November are about twice as rainy as the final 10 of October. Chances of rain or snow run at about 40 percent from the 1st through the 5th, then drop to just 25 percent on the 6th, 7th and 8th.

 

Farming and Gardening

Late bulbs, garlic, shrubs, and trees can be planted in November throughout much of the nation. The finest lunar and meteorological time of all for that activity will occur between full moon and the end of the moon’s third quarter. In northern states, it might be wise, however, to plant as soon as possible – preferably before the weather turns much nastier after Nov. 4th. Trim hooves, and cut hair on goats, slaughter livestock, give vaccinations, and treat for internal and external parasites under the dark moon.

Journal

Many people consider the transition period from one season to another to be a “thin time,” a porous stage not only between phases of the year but between the spheres of the living and the dead. Some believe that in autumn’s thin time, ghosts of creatures who once lived in the body, return to earth. In the thin time of late March, crossing to the spirit side may be easier, and the sick who struggle to stay alive through the winter often slip away just as spring is immanent.

The cycle of seasons is easy to connect with the cycles of human life. The growth and disappearance of foliage and flowers reflect a simple, clear pattern to which all living things conform. But the parallel time of second spring, when the buds and the first sprouts of next year’s April grow back alongside the remnants of the old year, is also exemplary. Second spring offers the reassurance of rebirth. It is a manifestation of the order Boethius invoked, “that which doth within itself embrace/The births and ends of all things in a round.”

The parallel of endings and beginnings in natural history creates more than a space-through-metaphor; it forms a thin interval of illusion in which the senses are not always certain of their place in time. The border between the landscape of November and the landscape of April is often more open than a linear calendar suggests. Sometimes the tree line shines orange like it does when hepatica first blossoms beneath it. November hedgerows sometimes glow yellow in the rain like rows of tall sweet clover or forsythia in bloom. Waterleaf is strong along the rivers. Celandine, dandelions, chickweed and violets bloom in the alleys. Seeds sprout in rotting logs. The last leaves of dogwood show through the undergrowth, as soft and pink as dogwood flowers. The low sun sets the grass and plants glowing like they glow in April, and when the sky is clear blue and the air is warm, reality contradicts linear reason.

All of this produces in me a feeling of healing reprieve and of compensation for the death of the year. I walk the woods, and I turn inward to the mystery. I willingly touch the emotional confusion, willingly misread the signs that allow passage to both memory and fantasy.

Almanack Literature

A Joke on Uncle John

By Mrs. Dora DeHart, Middletown, Ohio

Back in earlier times, neighbors could play jokes on each other and still be friends. But modern times have taken all that away from us.

This happened many years back, when people dug their own wells for their water supply.

Uncle John was digging his own well, and he ran into solid rock, which could only be moved with dynamite.

Two neighbors were helping Uncle John, and a ladder was placed down inside the hole. Uncle John was to go down and light the fuse and then hurry back up before the explosion went off.

Now these two neighbors were always good at playing jokes, so they took out whatever defuses dynamite and sent John down with everything ready for a big explosion.

When John turned his back to light the fuse, the neighbors pulled the ladder out. When John discovered the ladder was gone, the explosion down in the well wasn’t the dynamite – it was Uncle John screaming and clawing, trying to climb the wall of the well.

When the neighbors thought they had gone far enough, they put the ladder back down. But they didn’t stay around to see John get out, hoping it would take him a while.

When he did get out, they gave him eight twists of Red Ox tobacco if he would lay down the rocks he had gathered to throw at them. They all had a good laugh and remained good friends.