May 15-21, 2017

 

It is Nature’s rutting season. Even as the birds sing tumultuously and glance by with fresh and brilliant plumage, so now is Nature’s grandest voice heard and her sharpest flashes seen.

 

The air has resumed its voice, and the lightening, like a yellow spring flower, illumines the dark banks of the clouds. All the pregnant earth is bursting into life, like a mildew, accompanied with noise and fire and tumult. She comes dripping rain like a cow with overflowering udder. -Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1856

 Moon time: The Mock Orange Moon enters its last quarter at 4:20 a.m. on May 20, waning throughout the period and becoming new on May 25.

 

Sun time: By May 21, the sun reaches a declination of 20 degrees, 9 minutes, which is almost 90 percent of the way to summer solstice. The period between that date and July is the most stable solar time of summer.

 

Planet time: Saturn can be found along the southern horizon after midnight. Star time: By this time in May, Cassiopeia has moved deep into the northern night sky behind Polaris, and Cepheus, which looks a little like a house lying on its side, is beginning to come aroundto the east of Polaris. When Cepheus is due east of the North Star, 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, winter will have arrived.

 

The days surrounding the May 20 front are some of the most turbulent of the month, often marked by rain, tornadoes and high winds. The May 20 system also brings the threat of frost to the northern tier of states, but it typically spares tomatoes and eggplant below the 40th Parallel. The days following the arrival of the May 24 front are often unseasonably cold. Even though more than half of May 25ths and 26ths are in the 70s or 80s, a full 40 percent are not.

 

When hummingbirds arrive at your feeders, look for thrushes and scarlet tanagers to arrive, too, and when you see strawberries coming into full bloom, wild cucumber will be sprouting along the rivers.

 

Summer phlox are almost 2 feet tall as catbirds arrive in the bushes. And when azaleas lose their petals, morel season  is about over for the year and swallowtail butterflies come looking for bleeding heart flowers. Cricket song grows louder, and the earliest fireflies flicker in the lawn.

 

When the canopy of leaves is complete, then flea beetles attack beet greens in your garden. Aphids multiply on heliopsis. Damselflies and dragonflies hunt the ponds. Leafhoppers, corn borers and armyworms assault the crops. Flies are bothering the cattle, and ticks roam the brambles.

 

When you see mayflies by the water, spitbugs will be making their spittle shelters in the parsnips, and the first cut of hay will be underway. Chives bloom in the garden and lilacs reach full flower; that’s when crappie fishing peaks in the shallows.

 

When wood sorrel blossoms in the garden, hunt for rare, medicinal golden seal blooming in the woods. Marketing time: Memorial Day is May 29. Prepare wreathes and flower baskets for farmers’ markets and your roadside stand.

  

Nature’s horoscope for planting is ideal this week: Under the darkening moon, seed metabolism is higher in plants and sprouting improves. Hamster activity has been shown to increase, too. Human metabolism may rise as well. Bleeding is often heavier under the new moon, so be extra careful castrating new kids and lambs. And lunar lore and at least one study suggest that more females than males are born under the new moon.

 Creature time: The waning moon will be overhead in the morning this week, making that time the best lunar time of all for catching fish, scouting for game and looking for migrating songbirds. The cool fronts of May 20 and 24 should improve fishing as they approach; however, after they pass through, fish often feed less. Birders could find or hear nighthawks, Acadian flycatchers, yellowthroats and more warblers.

 

 

We Cranked and Cranked!

 By Clarence Dinnen Jamestown, Ohio I was 10 years old when the war began for the United States, Dec. 7, 1941.

 

During the war years, many things were rationed, including tires and rubber boots, gasoline, and a variety of foods. By living on the farm, we had plenty of meat, milk, eggs, cream, and lard to cook with. It was a cold January day, a Sunday afternoon, probably in 1943. My dad and I decided we would make a freezer of ice cream. My mom said she would make the ice cream mix if we did the rest. She cooked the milk, cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla and let it cool.

 

Dad and I broke some ice from the stock tank at the barn and crushed it in a burlap sack. We carried the ice to the house. We filled the freezer can with  he ice cream mix, added the ice, layered with salt and started to crank.

 

We cranked and cranked and cranked. Then we cranked some more. But the ice cream did not freeze. Finally, I tasted the ice. It was sweet. We had used all of a brown bag we thought was salt. It was our sugar – all of our rationed supply! Well, we had no more sugar. We used corn syrup and some honey for our sweetener for the next several weeks. Over the years, when we recalled this episode, we would laugh and make fun of ourselves and remember our rationed sugar.