August 21-27, 2017

 

Nature has, for the most part, lost her delicate tints in August. She is tanned, hirsute, freckled, like one long exposed to the sun. Her touch is strong and vivid. Mass and intensity take the place of delicacy and furtiveness. The spirit of Nature has grown bold and aggressive; it is rank and course; she flaunts her weeds in our faces. She wears a thistle on her bosom.

-John Burroughs

Moon time: On August 21, the Cricket and Katydid Moon is new at 1:30 p.m. The moon enters its second phase at 3:13 a.m. on August 29. Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, this moon passes overhead in the early afternoon.

Sun time: The sun’s position is the same now as in early April, and the rate of the night’s expansion increases from middle summer’s 2 minutes per day to 3 minutes. In another week, the day’s length will drop below 13 hours in this area.

Planet time: Mars is not visible in August, but it will appear with Venus in the east next month.

Star time: Scorpius moves into the southwest in the evenings of August, and the Big Dipper dips into the northwest. The Milky Way is overhead, along with the prominent star groups of the Northern Cross, Delphinus (which looks kind of like a dolphin), Lyra and Aquila. In the east, the great square is rising.

Shooting star time: No major meteor showers occur this week.

The August 29 front: As the final cool wave of the month approaches, the likelihood of rain doubles over the average of most August days, and the chances for chilly highs in the 60s or 70s jump toward September levels.

The Sept. 2 front is mild throughout most of the United States, but it brings light-frost season during which the chances for a minor freeze increase slightly with each cool front.

Zeitgebers (events in nature that tell the time of year): Signs of fall coming include rows of lanky great mulleins black and gone to seed, pokeweed the size of small trees with purple stalks and berries, the panicled dogwood with white fruit and leaves fading pink, trefoils decaying and staghorns dark brown above their slightly red or yellow leaves.

Grackles become louder in the afternoons now, but an entire morning can go by without a cardinal song or the sound of a dove. Ragweed pollen disappears with the last of the garden phlox.

The year’s final tier of wildflowers is budding: beggarticks, bur marigolds, asters, zigzag goldenrod.

Puffball mushroom hunting season begins if the nights are cool and wet enough. Magnolia scales appears on magnolias. Summer apples are almost all picked. The harvest of tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes and corn silage, and the third cutting of alfalfa hay, continue throughout the area.

The best of hickory nutting season begins as sweet corn picking thins. Sod the lawn in anticipation of cooler, wetter weather.

Marketing time: Plan to have lambs and kids ready to sell to the Passover market (March 30-April 7).

Mind and body time: By the end of July, the mind and the body are receiving all kinds of signals about the approach of fall. Autumn fashions fill the stores. Kids are getting excited or depressed about school.

The race is narrowing for the World Series. Football time is closing in. Fair time has passed for many counties. Al 

these forces combine with changes in the weather and the landscape to trigger emotional swings.

Creature time (for fishing, hunting, feeding, bird-watching): The waxing moon will be overhead in the afternoon this week, increasing the likelihood that fish and game will be more active at that time. The dropping barometer in front of the August 29 and Sept. 2 cool fronts should stimulate activity even more.

 

Telephone wires fill with birds as migrations accelerate. Flickers, red-headed woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, house wrens, scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, Eastern bluebirds, robins, grackles and black ducks move south.

It Takes a Village to Raise a Calf

By E. Bridgewater

Scottsburg, Ind.

We live on a farm and raise beef cows. We rotate them on pasture here at the farm and then across the road, where we have more pasture. In the crossover, if we miss a calf that is not with its mother, the mother will go back to the gate and bawl until her baby is found.

One time, I stayed in the truck and my husband went over the hill to find the cows and their calves. After a long time, I saw the two calves coming up, then a little while later, the cows were coming up the hill.

But no husband. Just when I was ready to go looking for him, here he came with a baby calf.

This is his story: He found the cows and calves, and they all started up the hill back toward the road. All of a sudden, the cows broke and ran to the right and back down the hill. My husband got mad! He picked up a big stick.

The cows stood with their heads down to the ground, and then they looked at him, then they looked back at the ground. When he got over to them, he saw what they were looking at: A tiny baby calf.

The baby’s mother, not being very motherly, had crossed over to the farm and didn’t look back, but when her baby was carried over to the barn and it let out a loud cry, she came running and was a good mother forever after.