Changes in the weather transform the very feel of the world’s presence, altering the medium of awareness in a manner that affects every breathing being in our vicinity…. Although it rarely occupies our full attention, the weather is always evident on the periphery of that attention, an ever-present reminder that the reality we inhabit is ultimately beyond our human control. – David Abram

The Sun

The sun’s declination remains near its solstice position of 23 degrees, its highest point in the earth’s sky, in the first week of July. The day’s length, however, loses about five minutes.

Aphelion, the point at which the earth is farthest from the sun, occurs on July 6. The sky of summer’s aphelion reflects the parallel universe of circular time. At noon, the stars overhead are the stars of winter’s midnight: Orion due south and the Pleiades overhead. On the clearest July afternoons, January’s Sirius is visible in the southeast.

In the Field and Garden

Try to time your harvest as the barometer is rising after cool fronts pass over your property. Dig your garlic before the heads break apart. Plant your autumn turnips right afterward.

Young raccoons and groundhogs become serious marauders as they grow to maturity. This may be the time for you to take preemptive measures to protect your corn and other crops.

Sell lambs and kids for Independence Day cookouts or tailgate parties at parades and celebrations (take orders). Keep your rabbits cool. Air conditioning is best, but shade is a good alternative. If you use a fan, don’t point it directly at the rabbits.

Plan for early autumn sales: the Harvest Moon Festival (Sept. 10) and Rosh Hashanah/Jewish New Year (Sept. 25-27).

Rose hips are forming on the wild roses. Traditional goat lore says that rose hips are a good supplement to help keep reproductive systems healthy.

Younger animals have a harder time adjusting to intense summer heat. High humidity makes it even more difficult for them to adjust.

At farmers markets, sell late black raspberries, mulberries, early elderberries, the first wave of summer apples, peaches, blackberries and wild grapes.

The Natural Calendar

As Deep Summer approaches, heat and humidity thicken the air and the mood of the landscape. Now annual cicadas start to whine throughout the warmest days. Sparrows chant to orient their young. Cardinals and robins still sing in the mornings, but their evening vespers are quieter and more wistful. Koi hatch from their eggs, hummingbird moths come for garden nectar, and yellowjackets suck the windfall fruit. Great blue herons leave their rookeries.

Praying mantises are almost two inches long, and the fiercely prickly wood nettles blossom in the woods, sharp teasel and sticky burdock in the waysides. Galls are developing on the goldenrod. Seed cones hang from the tulip trees. Late-summer field crickets are getting fat. Euonymus vines are budding in the alleys. Poisonous white snakeroot buds in the woodlots. Ironweed, boneset, wingstem, tall coneflowers and gray-headed coneflowers are budding in the fields.

The foliage of Solomon’s plume is dying back, mottled like the leaves of the May apple, its berries turning rusty red. Sweet Cicely seed heads are blackening. Angelica stems are dusky gray. The wild pink rugosa roses and the great pink water mallows wither. Blueweed flowers are at the top of their spikes.

Purple coneflowers, white vervain, horseweed, germander, teasel and wild lettuce blossom in the fields; tall bellflowers and great Indian plantain open in the woods. The first white-flowered thimbleweeds set thimbles.

Lamb’s-ear season closes. Early honeysuckles have their berries, red and orange. Garlic cloves break apart under the garden spade. Pokeweed and blackberry flowers become hard green berries, their maturing fruit measuring out the hottest months as they soften and darken.

 

Almanack literature

Collision Insurance

By Martha L. Been

Back in the 1980s, we had an unseasonably warm spell for Christmas Day in Wisconsin.  Since it was sunny “spring jacket weather,” our visiting grandchildren raced outside to play after opening presents. The children begged their grandpa to let Jimmy out of his pen, to play with them.

Jimmy was a Wisconsin State Champion Corriedale ram, whom we rented for a few weeks to cover our ewes. He was a powerful, beautifully built animal and he loved people, especially children. It was fun to see Jimmy follow the grandchildren around, like a giant dog, insisting on being the center of their attention.

My grown daughter, Debby, and I were the only ones left in the house when we heard a shattering crash and felt a massive tremor, which rocked our bi-level home.  Terrified, Debbie and I froze in our tracks, wondering if the house were about to collapse and expecting to hear screams of pain. Instead, we heard shouts and giggles.

While running around the back yard with the children, Jimmy had caught sight of his own reflection in our sliding glass lower level family room door, and you can imagine what he did. He charged his reflection, with all his magnificent bulk and heft, and splintered the heavy-duty door into millions of fragments.

Since no people were hurt, I naturally felt immediate concern for Jimmy. Was he okay? I didn’t want him to suffer – and I also realized that here was a very valuable animal, entrusted to our keeping. The implications were scary.

Well, Jimmy was just fine. God knew what he was doing when he built rams’ skulls! The men cleaned up the broken glass and fashioned a temporary door out of plywood. We all laughed and laughed, thinking we had experienced the funniest Christmas ever.

But even funnier was the visit from our homeowner’s insurance agent. As I related the incident of Jimmy seeing his reflection and charging the glass door, the young agent’s eyes grew larger and larger – and he suddenly went into hysterics.

You see, young as this insurance agent was, he had heard about our family the very first day he went to work for that company. We were a legend in that firm because our only other insurance claim – up until Jimmy destroyed our sliding glass door – had been 32 years previous when one of our sons, 18 months old at the time, had accidentally shot his “pee” into a wall outlet. The urine, containing ammonia, had triggered a small fire in the wall. Sparks resulted, so the fire department was involved as well – although no serious damage occurred.

At the time, the insurance company told us that was the most hilarious claim they’d ever had – and they made a legend of it. Everyone who ever came to work for them heard about the little boy who peed into an outlet and started a fire. And now, 32 years later, that same family was presenting a claim about a champion ram destroying a sliding glass door.

Of course we got the new door. And Jimmy went back to his owners after providing us with some nice lambs and plenty of entertainment.

Follow the summer with Bill Felker’s A Daybook for June in Yellow Springs, Ohio. These daybooks contain all the nature notes used to create Poor Will’s Almanack. Order yours from Amazon.

Copyright 2026: W. L. Felker