June 6-12, 2011
I will measure one by one
through this sweetest afternoon
strawberries, mulberries,
ducklings and dragon flies,
crickets and fireflies
under the waxing moon,
sundrops, angelica,  yucca stalks,
meadow rue, thistles and raspberries
lilies, astilbe,
telling the time in June.

-Hepatica Sun
Lunar phase and lore

The Mulberry Moon, entering its second quarter at 9:11 p.m. on June 8, waxes throughout the week, becoming unabashedly full on June 15 at 3:13 p.m. Rising in the afternoon and setting after midnight, the second-quarter moon is overhead (its most influential time for fishing and for food binging) in the evening.

Entering Virgo next Tuesday, Libra on Thursday, Scorpio on Saturday and Sagittarius the following Monday, the gibbous (fattening) moon will be superb for planting all the seeds you have of flowers and of vegetables that will produce their fruit above the ground – especially under fertile Scorpio next weekend. Fishing is favored as the June 10 weather system approaches, pushing down the barometer and making everyone hungrier.
Prepare to watch for the Lyrid Meteors after midnight between June 14-16. The bright moon, however, will make it challenging to find more than a few of these shooting stars.

Weather patterns
Good chances for a shower precede the weather system that arrives near June 10, and after its passage, chances are the best so far in the year for a heat wave. In all but the northernmost states (and at the highest elevations), lows near freezing and highs only in the 50s or 60s now recede from the realm of serious possibility until late August.

Although showers can be associated with warm temperatures, many of the days between this front and the next are dry. The sunniest June days usually occur between now and June 26. Approximately 100 frost-free days now remain on most farms and gardens of the country.
Daybook

June 6: Insect signs of early summer: cucumber beetles in the cucumbers, chinch bugs in the lawn, powdery mildew on the phlox, potato leafhoppers in the alfalfa, mites on the roses, chiggers in the wood lots and Japanese beetles almost everywhere.

June 7: Pollen from grasses reaches its peak in the central portions of the United States, as bluegrass, orchard grass, timothy, red top and Bermuda grass all continue to flower.

June 8: Channel catfish begin their summer feeding on mussels as the moon enters its second quarter. Yellow primroses, foxglove, pink and yellow achillea, late daisies, purple spiderwort and speedwell shine in the garden. All across the nation’s midsection, there are hedges of white elderberry flowers, roadsides of violet crown vetch, great fields of gold and green wheat.
June 9: In the East and Midwest, most pie cherries ripen between now and the first days of July.

June 10: Damselflies and daddy long-legs are everywhere when black raspberries come in. Mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks have reached their summer strength. Giant black cricket hunters hunt crickets in the garden. The sunniest days of the month usually come between now and June 26.
June 11: The peak of the parsnips in the fields is the high time for the wetlands’ poison hemlock and angelica. In the shade, poison ivy, fire pink, and honewort are flowering.

June 12: Orchard grass is brown and old, English rye grass full bloom, exotic bottle grass late bloom, brome grass very late, some timothy still tender. More Asiatic lilies are coming in now, first the orange, then the pink. Yellow primroses, foxglove, pink and yellow achillea, late daisies, purple spiderwort and speedwell shine in the garden.