Dusk comes earlier, dawn later. The night offers more of itself for us to experience with all our senses. It is a feast of scents and sounds and sights and feelings. Memories seem no more than skin deep in fall; they catch us up suddenly, unaware.

Our thoughts hurry to keep pace with the changes. The night is more available, more evocative. I wrap myself in a favorite jacket and stand dreaming in the crisp night air; I am content, and I know it.

-Cathy Johnson

Almanac horoscope

Moon time: The Corn Harvest Moon, reaching perigee (its position closest to Earth) on Oct. 9, wanes throughout the week, entering its final quarter at 7:25 a.m. on Oct. 12. It becomes the New Apple Cider Moon at 2:12 p.m. on Oct. 19. Rising in the middle of the night and setting close to noon, this moon passes above you in the morning.

Sun time: By the end of October’s second week, the sun has reached the same declension it holds at the end of February.

Planet time: Venus and Mars are the Morning Stars, but Jupiter fades into the sunset by Oct. 15.

Star time: Along the northern horizon, the Big Dipper hugs the top of the trees. In the east, winter’s Pleiades are coming up ahead of Taurus and the first glimpse of Orion.

Shooting star time: As Orion emerges through the night, it brings the Orionid meteors every night in October. The best viewing of these shooting stars should occur during this week while the moon is dark.

Weather time

The coldest morning so far in the season often occurs as the Oct. 13 front arrives, and chances of a low in the teens or 20s reach 20 percent in the northern half of the country for the first time since spring.

This front often is the first front to bring a serious chance of snow flurries at average elevations along the 40th Parallel. Highs below 50 degrees now occur about 30 percent of the time in the upper half of the United States.

After the passage of the Oct. 17 front, the average amount of cloud cover increases markedly over that of last week, clouds being twice as likely to occur than in the first half of the month. Clouds mean slower drying time for hay and wool, not to mention an increase in seasonal stress. New moon on Oct. 19 is expected to add cold to the clouds.

Zeitgebers: This week, middle autumn comes to the lower Midwest The redbuds and hickories, many still bright gold and red, shed quickly and the land enters the threshold of full maple-turn. The early trees are almost gone. Black walnut leaves and serviceberries are down.

Catalpas are bare, beans left swinging in the wind. Woolly bear caterpillars, however, multiply, sometimes swarm across the roads on sunny afternoons.

Farm and garden time

Late pastures often contain less nutrition when soil temperatures drop near 40 degrees. Consequently, late-autumn feeding can be tricky; your animals may have plenty to eat, depending on the weather, but their grazing may give them less nutrition and energy than in the summer months.

Marketing time: Most pumpkins are sold between September and January. Local markets are important until after Halloween, when commercial buyers replace them. If you have a little land, you may be able to sell around $2,000 worth of pumpkins per acre.

Mind and body time

Autumn is often a period during which people tend to reminisce and replay particular periods of their lives. Such memories often produce nostalgia, and sometimes sadness. One of the best cures is helping others.

Since these are the early days of seasonal affective disorder time, they are good days to begin a journal to help you keep track of your feelings. Although emotions are subject to a highly complex variety of influences, you may be able to track just how the weather, the day’s length, the sky cover and the moon affect you.

Creature time (for fishing, hunting, feeding, bird-watching): The approach of the Oct. 13 and 17 cold fronts will push down the barometer and encourage fish and game to feed in the days prior to the arrival of these weather systems. Since the moon will be overhead in the morning hours, do most of your fishing and hunting before lunch.

The steady advance of high-pressure systems across the area accelerates the movement of green herons, sandhill cranes, sandpipers, terns, nighthawks, chimney swifts, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, phoebes, mockingbirds, catbirds, brown thrashers, wood thrushes and vireos.

Great flocks of blackbirds and robins migrate down the rivers. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers move through the woods. Insect numbers decline, and spider webs gradually disappear from the woods.

Almanac literature

When Did This Happen?

By Ibbie Ledford

Willard, Ohio

The first part of Ibbie Ledford’s memories appeared in last week’s Almanack. This second part touches on many of the changes technology brought in the 20th century, as well as some of the major events of that time.

Our first telephone was on a party line. Six families shared one line, which meant we often had to wait until another family was done with their conversation to make a call, and some listened to their neighbors’ conversations for the latest gossip.

My first job was as a telephone operator. Facing a wall of numbers, we watched for a light to come on and then plugged the wire from that light into the number the caller received, creating the ring that connected the two. This may seem complicated, but for me, trying to use today’s cell phones is much harder to understand.

I have lived in a world without microwaves, computers, cell phones, DVDs and paper towels. (How did we ever live without paper towels?) Our first TV was a 13-inch black-and-white with only one channel and a very fuzzy picture, but I witnessed via TV the first landing on the moon.

I have lived through many wars. My husband, Willie, was a World War II veteran. My younger brother, Wallace, was killed in the invasion of Peleliu Island in 1944. Since then, there have been the Korean War, the Gulf War (my youngest brother, Don, was in that one.), the Iraq War and now all the Middle East “wars.”

I have witnessed many heartbreaking tragedies: the assassination of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the attempted assassination of President Reagan and the murders of more than 3,000 when terrorists flew into the Twin Towers in New York.

Now we live in what George Bush might call “over-extra,” extraordinary times, fearing that terrorists may be walking among us, not knowing where they might strike next.

As I sit here now, I often ponder how many more wonders and tragedies I might witness in the years I have left.

Poor Will’s Almanack for 2018 is now available. Order yours online from Amazon.com or, for an autographed copy, order from www.poorwillsalmanack.com

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