Mid-August, New York

The old Celtic and Gaelic calendars marked the beginning of autumn at August 1st, and here in farm country that makes a great deal of sense.  While spring has a feeling of galloping joy and summer a tone of happy waiting, now there is a small but noticeable tension.  It’s time to start thinking about the approaching winter – the countdown has begun.

The first cutting of hay is in and the second underway, tree fruits are in or waiting, fields and vegetable gardens are bursting with ripening crops.  Even if crops aren’t ready yet, a practiced eye can see what the yield will be, and there’s no more time for adjustments: we’ll get what we get, and any changes will have to be made next year.  Stores are full of canning supplies; man and beast alike are stashing away the bounty.

Looking down over the swamp (we prefer the term “wetlands”), where a month ago it was pink and blue with wild phlox, cornflowers and mallows, now it’s the deep rose of Joe Pye Weed and milkweed, with fluffy white Queen Anne’s Lace and touches of early goldenrod.

The flower beds have hit a lull, with only echinacea (thank goodness for all the new varieties!), Phlox “David” and “Bright Eyes” and a few lingering daylilies still in bloom.  Mums haven’t cracked color yet.  The summer annuals are still in bloom, but are starting to look a little tired – time to gather seeds for next year and make notes in the garden journal.

The birds aren’t as full of conversation as a month ago, now that the babies are fledged, but crickets, grasshoppers, humming bees and a few cicadas are heard during the day, and the full chorus of katydids at night.  Still a few frog voices, but not as many.  I haven’t seen any monarch caterpillars on the milkweed yet, but they should be along any day now.

The skies darken earlier, of course, and are more likely to be free of haze.  We’ll be watching for shooting stars around the 15th!

Karen Albeck is an amateur naturalist and natural journal-keeper who watches for Signs of the Season in central New York state.

Photos were provided by Karen Albeck.

Blackberries in TN

Midsummer in Wales

Posting this for Sara Polke-Johns who sent it to me via email:
Midsummer’s Day was the 15th anniversary of my Buddhist Ordination. I’ve always been delighted that I was ordained on such an auspicious day. Last evening my husband and I celebrated by toasting the sun lengthening the shadows on the fields  from our Welsh garden, with of course strawberries

Throughout we were loudly serenaded by our resident Song Thrush. When it eventually became cooler we watched the film of Midsummer Night’s Dream. All immensely lovely

Signs of Spring

Click on the comments to see all the great submissions from readers on 3/15/2010.

From Ginny Lang, Bellingham, WA
Last week I was walking Coco, our enthusiastic German Shorthair Pointer, and she was enjoying the smells in our neighborhood, wagging and wiggling as she nosed the ferns and ground cover and watched, very carefully, the fat robins in the yards. I’m never quite sure who is the walker and who is the walkee, but I’m pretty sure Coco knows. We live in the hills above Bellingham, WA and Lake Whatcom so it’s about 8 to 10 degrees cooler up here than in town down by the Bay. There, we’re seeing daffodils and forsythia in full bloom – earlier than usual – and the cherry blossoms are glorious already. Up here, the forsythia is just beginning to show yellow flowers and I’ve noticed little red buds on the salmon berry trees. The tulips are showing their tips above the ground and it looks like they will bloom well before their usual April arrival.

As we walked, I began to hear a racket. This wasn’t a scolding squirrel, circling crow or an airplane over the lake…it sounded like metal on metal, and it was close. Coco heard it too, and we headed back toward our house and the unusual sound.

There on the dead end sign was a woodpecker, pecking for all he was worth on the bottom corner of the sign. Trying to attract the ladies, I’d suspect. I laughed and got out the camera. Coco pointed. All sorts of puns, practically limericks, come to mind about this fellow’s effort to attract a mate: his big….sound…. ringing through the woods, the age old woodpecker equivalent to a dating site. He’s been back, so I guess he’s checking to see if there have been any responses to his posting.

From Jane Grant in Baltimore, Maryland.

A photo from a hike in the woods along the Gunpowder River in central Maryland on January 18, 2010. In my zone, Skunk Cabbage is due to appear in February, but I found these a bit earlier, poking up through the leaf litter in the otherwise brown, bare woods. A beautiful sign of Spring!

The Scent of Spring

This gorgeous photo of an Indian Plum leafing out was taken by Alyss Broderick and is one of many beautiful seasonal photographs in the new Calendar Companion Weekly Planner.

Although I haven’t seen any Indian Plum, I’ve already encountered the fragrance that I call  the Scent of Spring.This year I smelled it for the first time on January 8, just outside the front door of an apartment building in my neighborhood.The next earliest smelling (can’t call it a sighting) was January 18 in 2004, so this is really early.

The next night, I noticed that the sweet box (Sarcocca hookeriana var. humilis, also known as Christmas box) outside my apartment building was already in bloom. When the landlord redid the landscaping around our apartment, he planted a row of sweet box.The first year it didn’t bloom at all but this year it is going crazy.

When I smell this lovely, flowery scent, I know spring is coming soon. What is the first sign of spring where you live?

Signs of Autumn

A frosty late autumn, early morning photo of a churchyard in Llangathen, West Wales. The mist is rising from the river Tywi Valley (Towy in english). The ancient hillfort of Grongar Hill is in the distance. Taken by Sara Polke-Johns.

Please leave your Signs of Autumn here in the Comments.  Thank you!

Signs of Summer

Photograph © Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts

From Alyss in Portland, Oregon:

Summer is here!! The Solstice was only a few weeks ago so it is still light late and the warm, dry weather has come into full swing. I’ve been enjoying long evenings with friends on decks and patios all over town since it’s hardly dark at 9pm. The gardens are overflowing with greens still and fruiting trees and vegetables are starting to share their bounty as well. I’ve had three people give me cherries this week because trees are so overloaded! The tomatoes are starting to show green fruit and so are the apple trees.

I started a traditional summer infused alcohol last week called Vin de Noix. It is eau de vie and wine infused with green walnuts, cloves, vanilla and sugar. It is said that it is best made between Saint Jean’s feast day on June 24 and Bastille Day on July 14. I started mine on July 4th, an American high summer tradition. It smells fantastic (anything with cloves, vanilla and sugar will) but needs at least 40 days to fully infuse. By Lammas I will taste it and see how it is doing. I hear it might be a bit bitter from the walnuts, but that will eventually fade into a smooth, thick after dinner sipping alcohol.

Summer is a frantic time too. My friends complain that their weekends are booking up and that there just isn’t enough time to do everything we want to do during this glorious but brief warm, light, dry season. I get to feeling it too. So much to pick, to preserve, to cook, to eat, to see, to do. Last fall I remember feeling such kinship with the trees losing their leaves. That is time for letting go and focusing inward. This time of year though I like to give into the frantic energy. Yes, let’s go out! Yes, let’s go harvesting! Yes, let’s can, let’s play, let’s live while the sun shines and the days are long. There will be time for rest when the year is dark again.

Alyss lives in Portland Oregon and blogs at The Wheel and the Disk.

From Lu in Florida:

(Photo by Lu Merritt)

Hope in Our Hot Season/Moving Toward Fall in Florida

Harvest time comes early here in subtropical paradise, North Central Florida almost to the Georgia state line. Our seasonal shifts are more subtle here than in other parts of the country, but if you know what to look for, there are definite markers.

By mid-July, our local crops—corn, cantaloupe, watermelon—have peaked and been picked. The only things still ripening in the garden are late tomatoes, so thankfully it’s still possible to have one of summer’s perfect joys, a fresh tomato sandwich: Slather mayonnaise on two pieces of your favorite bread, cut slices of a freshly-picked tomato to your preferred thickness, lay the slices on the bread, and season with salt and pepper. Heaven.

Perhaps the most obvious marker of the season’s shift is a change in the quality of light. At the summer solstice, the light has a fierce, bright, almost blinding quality, like a giant searchlight that casts no shadows. Around the first of August, there is a change—the light begins to get noticeably softer, and while the days are still long, the afternoon shadows take on a smokier glow.

Right about now, too, the farmers begin to mow their hay fields, and we begin to see haystacks—or really, big rolls of hay—scattered throughout some of the neighboring fields. “Hay!” we call, and point out the fields to each other as we pass them, happy and excited to be the first to spot this particular universal sign of fall.

The night-blooming jasmine, which grows dormant and gets cut back in the winter, has been growing since springtime and now begins to put out flowers whose fragance will soon become noticeable. The beautyberry bushes, which flowered back in May, start to form little green berries that will turn a beautiful shade of purple a bit later in the season.

Grass and trees, all so verdant green this summer because we have had a lot of rain, begin to take on a yellowish tinge that is a definite harbinger of fall. We begin, eventually, to notice that a few leaves are starting to fall from some of our trees.

Newspapers are filled with flyers advertising back-to-school sales. The local newspaper’s sports section steps up its coverage of the area’s football teams; diehard football fans start counting the days ’til the first big game. And we all begin to keep wary eyes on weather reports about tropical systems and possible hurricanes; it doesn’t do to go into August and September without extra stocks of peanut butter, other canned goods, and water—just in case.

Fall isn’t here yet, by any means, but we definitely have some pointers to let us know it’s on the way­—giving us hope for cooler weather in the middle of our hottest season.

Lu Merritt lives in northern Florida and blogs at A Word Witch.