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Take advantage of summer’s good mood to get work done
 
June 26-July 2, 2017

Each beautiful thing, a flower, the song of a bird, awakens in our soul the memory of our origin. We listen to the voice of beautiful things in order to understand the voice of our soul.
-The Mevlevi Dervishes
 
Almanac horoscope

Moon time: The Sweet Corn Moon waxes through the week, entering its second quarter on June 30 and becoming gibbous the next day. Rising in the evening and setting after midnight, this moon shines throughout the first half of the night.

Sun time: The sun’s declination remains near its solstice position of 23 degrees, its highest point in the Earth’s sky, this last week of June. The day’s length, however, loses about 5 minutes. Aphelion, the point at which the Earth is furthest from the sun, occurs at 3 a.m. on July 3.

Planet time: Once again moving retrograde, this time into Taurus, Venus leads Orion (as well as Sirius, the Dog Star) into the morning.

Star time: 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.

Weather time

The Dog Days and the Corn Tassel Rains often begin on July 3, as the chances for highs in the 90s rise and thunderstorms multiply. Although the July 6 cool front brings some relief from the heat, chances for mild 70s on July 8-9 are relatively low in most of the nation.

Zeitgebers (events in nature that tell the time of year): 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.

June’s berries are disappearing: black raspberries  and strawberries decline quickly inwarmer years; the best mulberries have fallen. July’s wild cherries ripen, and elderberries set fruit.

Thistledown lies across the pastures in the windless afternoons, cottonwood cotton along the streets.. The oats mature and the first tier of soybeans blooms. Maroon seedpods have formed on the locusts. Some green-hulled walnuts are already on the ground.

The earliest cicadas start to chant. This year’s ducklings and goslings are nearly full-grown. Trumpet vine flowers fall in the midsummer rains.

Field and garden time

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 after.

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

Marketing time: Get your roadside stand together for the Fourth of Julyweekend. Then think about the Muslim feast of Eid Al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice) on Sept. 1-2. Lambs and kids in the range of 55-80 pounds are favored for this market.

Mind and body time

The Almanac horoscope favors almost everybody this week. In the stability of this brightest time of year, you should have plenty of mental resources for all the work you have to do. In fact, the period between late June and the end of July is one of the best psychological spaces in the course of the seasons.

If you are in business, take advantage of the steady course of the summer to focus your energies. In the garden and on the farm, keep on task, even when the weather turns uncomfortably warm.

And one of the reasons people take vacations during this time of year is not only that the weather is perfect for outdoor activities, but the relatively unchanging meteorological conditions allow them to deal a little better with the changes in schedules and routine, the challenges and difficulties of “getting away.”

Creature time (for fishing, hunting, feeding, bird-watching): The waxing moon will be overhead before dark this week and fishing should, therefore, be more productive at those times. The falling barometer before the cool fronts of June 29 and July 6 is expected to make  late June evenings and the early nightsaround our nation’s birthday excellent times for angling.

Continue to watch for great spangled fritillaries in the garden, and often hummingbird moths come to visit the beebalm around this time of year. Listen for adult robins guiding their fledglings through the honeysuckles with short intermittent peeping. And the annual cicadas (the green ones) should start their screeching calls any day now.

Almanac classics

Rattlesnake!
By Anna Monroe Bruce
Fairborn, Ohio
 
One day my brother Lewis was coming home in the old buckboard – that is what we called the old buggy that had lost its top. He saw a big, big rattlesnake in the road sunning itself.

Lewis got out and grabbed a forked stick, forcing the forked stick over its head. He took a stout twine string out of his pocket and put it into a slip loop around the snake’s neck. He then lifted it up into the buckboard and tied it till it could not move and brought it home.
 
Daddy always carried a sharp Barlow knife in his pocket, and he took more strings, tied the snake more, dropping its body down into a big wooden salt fish bucket.

Holding the snake’s head firmly but gently, Daddy used his Barlow knife and a little pair of metal pliers, and he removed both upper fangs, including both sacs of poison from its face. The rattlesnake lived, and we fed it eggs and mice in a cage.

Our sister Vana was married and living in Brown County, Ohio. Her husband and she came home early that fall, taking the rattler, which was no longer dangerous, back home with them. It began to sleep or hibernate more every day, but they showed it to all their friends who came to see it.

Finally, they gave it a little chicken. It swallowed it and went to sleep. All fine and dandy – if they hadn’t kept warming it up so it would awaken and strike for the people who wanted to see it in action. Finally, after a few times being warmed and awakened, it just went limber and died. No one there had ever seen a rattlesnake, and it was a big beauty. But, oops, they broke nature’s rule once too often – keeping it in captivity.
6/22/2017