Although we talk so much about coincidence, we do not really believe in it. In our heart of hearts we think better of the universe, we are secretly convinced that it is not a slipshod, haphazard affair, that everything in it has meaning. – J.B. Priestly

The Moon

The Travelling Toad and Frog Moon entered its final quarter on Oct. 28 at 3:05 p.m. This week of the darkening moon is a perfect lunar time for completing garden planting of bulbs and perennials.

Fishing and scouting for game are favored when the moon is overhead these mornings, and your luck should increase as the Halloween cold front and the fronts of Nov. 2 and 6 approach. Creatures will sometimes be most active as the barometer falls in advance of these weather systems.

Weather Trends

Highs are usually in the 50s or 60s, with the odds for 70s about one in four. The danger of frost remains similar to that of the third week in October; about one night in three receives temperatures in the upper 20s or lower 30s. But by this late in the season, the chances of a hard freeze have risen past 50 percent, and the odds get better each night for killing lows.

This week is generally a brighter one than last week. Chances of sun are about 70 percent throughout the period, and some of the driest October days include the 29th  (with just a 15 to 20 percent chance of precipitation). The sixth high-pressure system of the month usually arrives near Halloween. If it is approaching on the 31st, that evening will be warm, with maybe a little rain. If the front arrives on the 29th or 30th, the eve of all All Saints Day is usually chilly.

Zeitgebers

(Events in Nature that Tell the Time of Year)

Hosta seedpods crack, revealing their ebony contents. The last cabbage butterflies look for cabbages. The last daddy longlegs hunt in the flowerbeds and wood piles.

In many years, the canopy is almost completely open by this time of the month. White snakeroot seeds come apart in downy clusters like thistle seeds or goldenrod. The final aster blossoms disappear. Smartweed withers.

Winter craneflies spin in the sun. Asian lady beetles seek winter refuge in crevices of house siding.

Forsythia sometimes blooms again this week. At night, sluggish crickets fill in for the silent katydids.

Winds now start to rise to their winter speed, an average of nearly 15 miles an hour.

Mind and Body

The S.A.D. Index, which measures seasonal stress on a scale from 1 to 100, rises throughout the period, reaching a troublesome 60 by Halloween and then climbing into the 70s as the moon reaches perigee on Nov. 4. People who experience Seasonal Affective Disorder will have their first bout with emotional challenges in the weeks ahead.

In the Field and Garden

Dig up onions; remove the mum tops; cut flowers and herbs for drying. Get your woodpile covered, too. Transplant perennials. Put in new shrubs and trees.

Half of the corn has generally been cut for grain; soybeans are 75 percent harvested in most years.

Begin major watering of shrubs and trees and continue through mid-November in order to provide plantings – especially new transplants – with full moisture for the winter months. Prepare mulch for November protection of sensitive plants and shrubs.

Winter wheat is usually 90 percent planted, 65 percent emerged. Fall apple picking is often complete by this week.

Wrap young, newly planted trees with burlap to help them ward off winter winds. Complete fall field and garden tillage before the November rains.

Fair Winds and Ill

By Bill Felker

You are your own sky,

With signs and moons and winds

Enough to prophesy.

Celtus

Modern psychology and meteorobiology have recently discovered what Hippocrates, the Greek physician, learned from experience 2,500 years ago: change can produce sickness.

“It is change,” wrote the father of medicine, “that is chiefly responsible for the diseases, especially the greatest changes, the violent upheavals both in the seasons and in other things. But the seasons which come on slowly are the safest, as are gradual changes of regimen and temperature, and gradual transitions from one time of life to another.”

The arts of healing and forecasting were born in the same bed. If you want to avoid disease, look for its source.

“A person must observe,” Hippocrates stated, “the risings and settings of stars that he may know how to predict the coming of sickness; he must understand the ways of storms and the extremes of the universe from which diseases come.”

Observation will show which winds bear us ill. The more we wait and watch, the more we see our future. Succeeding at this vigil, we may learn to read the most intimate barometer of all, our own body,

“As it is possible to know which seasons cause each kind of illness,” noted Hippocrates, “so also it is possible from our disease to forecast rains and droughts.”

Poor Will Wants Your Stories

Poor Will pays $5 for unusual and true farm, garden, animal and even love stories used in this almanack! Send yours to Poor Will’s Almanack at the address listed below.

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Bill Felker’s Poor Will’s Almanack for 2022 is now available. In addition to weather, farming and gardening information, reader stories and astronomical data, this edition contains 50 essays from Bill’s weekly radio segment on NPR radio, WYSO. For your autographed copy, send $22 to Poor Will, P.O. Box 431, Yellow Springs, OH 45387. Or order from Amazon or from www.poorwillsalmanack.com.

Copyright 2022 – W. L. Felker