The Old Farmer's Almanac 2015 (15 page)

June Hath 30 Days

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,

Fills the children’s hands with posies.

–
Sara Coleridge

Farmer’s Calendar

We had seen wild strawberries on the path by the pond when we moved in 36 years ago. Then, to our surprise, we found them in our yard; just a small patch at first, but it has been growing steadily. The area covered is now approximately 90 square feet. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they’re taking over.

Our immigration policy toward the yard has always been lenient; we welcome dandelions, clover, and other interlopers, and the strawberries, with their cheerful white flowers, make us look forward to summer. They lie practically flat on the ground, so mowing doesn’t disturb them. The berries are so tiny—hardly larger than BBs—that it’s not worth trying to gather them to sprinkle on cereal. In any case, birds usually beat us to them, and the dogs graze on them, too. When they do, their breath afterward smells like the topping on strawberry shortcake.

Could the dogs be responsible, indirectly, for our recent bounty? The patch in our yard straddles the path we take to walk them to and from the pond, and as we inadvertently tread on the berries, their rapturous aroma rises into our nostrils. Perhaps the crushed berries have been hitchhiking on our shoes? On the paws of the dogs? Or in their guts? If so, there’s another argument for owning dogs.

The Seventh Month

SKY WATCH
The first few days of the month bring a spectacular conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. The pair stands 14 degrees high in the west, 1 hour after sunset. On the 6th, Earth reaches aphelion, its annual point farthest from the Sun. The Sun is now 7 percent dimmer than in January, although its near-peak elevation in Northern Hemisphere skies makes its rays more intense than in winter. On the 25th, the Moon sits to the right of Saturn, which has been retrograding into Libra since May. The 31st brings a “Blue Moon,” a popular term for a second full Moon in a calendar month, which happens every 2½ years, on average.

July Hath 31 Days

Summer is a glorious season,

Warm and bright and pleasant.

–
Denis Florence Macarthy

Farmer’s Calendar

Turkeys are a common sight here all winter. We watch them moving through our woods in ghostly battalions, and when the snow is too deep for them in the woods, their unmistakable four-toed tracks draw hieroglyphics up and down our driveway.

But when the first big tom set foot in our yard on a hot summer day, we were startled. He was followed by four females, who crisscrossed the far end of the field as if they were partners in a quadrille. They stalked deliberately to and fro, their heads and beaks dipping rhythmically to dine on bugs.

Then they sat down in the sun, like ladies at a 19th-century church picnic, spreading their voluminous skirts. Perhaps they were taking a dust bath—that end of the yard is the first to dry out. They stayed half an hour, looking contented.

Recently there was a kerfuffle in the local paper when a letter to the editor proposed that turkeys should be hunted year-round because they carry deer ticks, which in turn carry Lyme disease. The suggestion was answered by a salvo from outraged correspondents challenging the writer’s knowledge of turkeys, ticks, and good sense.

Do turkeys read the papers? Maybe that’s why they looked contented.

The Eighth Month

SKY WATCH
All planets except Saturn now fall into the Sun’s glare and become difficult or impossible to see. The close conjunction between Jupiter and Mercury, extremely low in bright twilight on the 6th, is visually challenging. The absence of the Moon on the night of the 11th makes conditions ideal for viewing the great Perseid meteor shower, which peaks after midnight. Expect a “shooting star” every minute. On the 15th, Venus slides behind the Sun in an inferior conjunction, ending its evening star apparition. It reappears as a morning star in the east at month’s end. The gibbous Moon floats to the upper left of Saturn on the 22nd. Saturn remains a bright evening star throughout the month.

August Hath 31 Days

And the thin, wasted, shining summer rills
Grew joyful with the coming of the rain.

–
William Morris

Farmer’s Calendar

It’s been a year of abundant rain, which means abundant mushrooms. Walking the dogs has been like leading children through a bakery. Wiggles doesn’t eat many, but Echo is voracious, and we’re constantly jerking her head away from some tasty-looking fungus, or reaching into her mouth to remove one, or yelling “Drop it!” just too late. Then, a few hours later, she is temporarily sick when her innards rebel.

I can hardly blame her inability to resist temptation. I’ve never seen such variety of colors and shapes, and they all look like bread, rolls, and pastries. There are toasty-brown dinner rolls and toadstools with bumps on top that look like cinnamon muffins. A whole village of red cupcakes popped up at the far end of the pond trail, and over by the south shore there was a 3-day eruption of orange-and-yellow discs, looking like air-dropped pizzas.

When the mushroom feasting began, I nurtured a foolish hope that the dogs would instinctively avoid any species that would make them sick. Alas, no. Dogs not only eat poisonous varieties, but they also gobble down hallucinogenic mushrooms and then spend hours chasing and snapping at illusions. Experts advise removing mushrooms from the yard, but my yard is a thousand acres of woods. And it’s still raining.

The Ninth Month

SKY WATCH
Neptune, in its closest approach of the year, is in opposition on the 1st. Mars, Jupiter, and Venus have crossed into the morning sky, but only Venus is easily seen at dawn, as it rapidly rises higher each morning. It hovers just to the upper right of the waning crescent Moon in the wee hours of the 10th. The autumnal equinox brings the start of autumn on the 23rd at 4:21 A.M. Saturn gets lower each evening in the southwest at dusk. The year’s best lunar eclipse for North American viewers unfolds on the 27th; the partial phase begins at 9:07 P.M., when the Moon enters Earth’s umbral shadow. Totality begins ait 10:11 P.M. and ends at 11:24 P.M.