Poor Will’s Almanack for the final week of late summer, in the final week of the Windfall Apple Moon, the second week of the sun in Virgo, the forty-first week of the year in nature.....
when more and more cornfields become dusky brown;
when patches of gold show on the Osage and cottonwoods and poplars and maples and white mulberry trees,
when buckeye and black walnut trees are shedding.
when kisses of scarlet appear on creeper and poison ivy;
when panicled dogwood has its first white berries; when dogbane pods turn red;
when wood nettle, tall nettle and small-flowered agrimony have gone to black seed
when redbuds and the burning bush are blushing;
when mint has reached the close of its cycle, when teasel is complete, and coneflowers and giant prairie dock are fading.
when the yellow tiger swallowtails, black swallowtails, cabbage whites, monarchs, small golden skippers and silver spotted skippers visit the zinnias.
when hummingbirds, hummingbird moths explore the earliest asters,
when arrowhead bloom is over along the water’s edge, but orange jewelweed, swamp beggar ticks and common beggar ticks are in full flower.
when cicadas still rasp in the afternoons, when cardinals still call out
vespers before the crickets and the katydids begin to sing.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the first week of early fall. In the meantime, look at the land around you; list or say to yourself everything you see in the landscape. It all belongs to the final week of late summer.
