December 16th
The 350th Day of the Year

The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost upon either the head or the heart.

John Burroughs

Sunrise/set 7:50/5:11 Day's Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
Average High/Low: 39/24 Average Temperature: 32
Record High: 65 - 1984 Record Low: - 15 - 1951

Weather
Today’s temperature distribution: five percent chance for 60s, fifteen for 50s, thirty-five percent for 40s, twenty percent for 30s, twenty percent for 20s. And for the first time this winter, there is a five to ten percent chance for a high only in the single digits. Morning temperatures fall below freezing all but 30 percent of the time, and below-zero temperatures occur one day in 20. Rain comes about 15 percent of the days, snow another 15 percent. The 16th is one of December’s brighter days, the sun appearing a full 70 percent of the time.

Natural Calendar
Soil temperatures have often fallen into the mid 30s throughout the lower Midwest. The Christmas tree harvest is almost over. Odds against the survival of garden vegetables rise sharply as the full force of the December 15th cold front settles in across the area.

Daybook
1982: Chard has finally been killed by the cold, kale eaten by rabbits. Parsley and chives are still all right, purple deadnettle and mint unharmed.

1983: Carrots pulled, firm, medium sized, some of the most consistent I've grown.

1988: Rose hips seem to be thinning. How long do they last?

1997: The second day in a row of sun and temperatures in the 50s. Wispy morning cirrus clouds streaked the sky, made me feel there was more warmth to come. I drove to Fairborn; there was something about the city streets, something in the color, the way the sun lay across the lawns, that reminded me of spring in Minneapolis. On the way home, I saw a large hawk above Dayton-Yellow Springs Road. At dusk, the sky was rose color with the windswept high clouds that had adorned the morning and afternoon. Just before dark, two flocks of starlings circled the shopping center where I had stopped; they swooped and dove and climbed, intersecting and separating before they finally settled for the night. On the way home, I saw the moon rising yellow in the cirrus over Dayton Street, bigger than I’d ever seen it before.

2000: In spite of one of the coldest Novembers and Decembers in recent history, the pear leaves still hold on in town, many still green.

2004: Euonymus leaves were darkened and hydrangea leaves curled by the cold of the last two nights. A few euonymus berries hang on by the back box elder.

2005: At 5:50 this evening, the sky clear, the temperature about 20 degrees, a screech owl called steadily from the back trees.

2008: Crows at 7:50 this morning. Inventory in the alley and the yard: grasses pale and bent, hulls peeling and unraveling on the black walnuts, goldenrod and great ragweed broken, blackened euonymus drooping, chicory twisted and falling, burdock collapsed and brown, sweet rocket, garlic mustard, celandine, poppies, thistles still green but limp, empty small white and New England asters, limp stella d’oro foliage, brittle lily stalks, chives flat and pale, only a few parsley stalks still standing.

December 17th
The 351st Day of the Year

The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;
The world's whole sap is sunke:
The world's whole sap is sunke.

John Donne

Sunrise/set: 7:51/5:12 Day's Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
Average High/Low: 39/24 Average Temperature: 32
Record High: 66 - 1984 Record Low: - 10 - 1989

Weather
The 17th brings a warm afternoon above 50 degrees five percent of the years. It offers 40s on 35 percent of the years, 30s on 25 percent, 20s on 25 percent, teens on five percent, and single digits on five percent. The sun shows through more than half the days, but chances for rain or snow are 50 to 60 percent. Eighty-five percent of all the nights dip below 32 degrees. One dawn in 20 falls below zero.

Natural Calendar
At 11:00 p.m., the Pleiades and Taurus are overhead. Orion controls the eastern half of the sky. Regulus and Leo are rising in the east, preceded by Cancer. Cygnus leads the Milky Way into the far west. Summer's Vega finally disappears into the northern horizon.

Daybook
1986: Cardinal sings at 9:30. Sparrows are loud and shrill all afternoon.

1988: Crows and grackles in the yard this morning and along the east fencerow. Sparrows sing all day in the bare forsythia hedge.

1992: At National Road and U.S. 68, hundreds of crows in the west wood lot. Tonight, Barb told me about finding trees felled by beavers on the west side of the Jacoby area.

1994: Coming back from walking the dog about nine o'clock this evening, I found a live woolly-bear caterpillar crawling slowly by the front door. I wondered if I ought to bbing it in, let it make its cocoon in the warm greenhouse; but then, I thought, it might emerge early, might come out in February and flutter around the plants, dying before early spring. So I picked it up and put it under the leaves in the raspberry bed. The rest of December is supposed to be mild; maybe it will survive.

1997: Another night of the moon’s third quarter, the land bright with lunar light when I got up at 5:00. Dawn was soft and orange. No sparrows singing along Xenia Avenue. No crows heard, no cardinals.

1999: On the way to Springfield: Flocks and flocks of crows and starlings, the world full of birds. The same a few days ago when I came this way. At campus, a chorus of sparrows in the crabapples. The sky is streaked with cirrus, windswept.

2004: At one this morning, a skunk sprayed under the house, and we spent the night in the spare bedroom, the attic fan running, pumping out the odor. A cardinal sang once just as the orange sun was coming up from the southeast. As Mike and I walked along the river, a small flock of turkey vultures circled overhead. Toward town, crows were calling. Along the woods floor, the euonymus was dark and curled from the cold. The vines that had climbed through the trees showed only their white seed casings; their last fallen red berries lay along the paths. Bella did not pick up any burs on the walk – that’s been the case for a month of walks now.

2005: Drove to Springfield late this afternoon. Three long formations of geese were flying south along the highway, hundreds of birds. And near the mall, the giant flock of winter crows were back after staying away for years. In the front yard, honeysuckle berries hold to their branches. Downtown, many pear leaves hold, burned from the cold December.

2006: Temperatures have been way above normal since we returned from Florida last week. Robins were peeping the yard when I went outside this morning. Cardinals were singing off and on. When I walked Bella at about 9:00, I heard a dove calling over toward Stafford Street.

2007: At Charley and Nancy’s greenhouse today, I asked Charley whether he had started his bedding plants yet. He showed me a few flats he had planted. The pansies looked the best, maybe half an inch high. He said they would be ready to sell early in the spring.

December 18th
The 352nd Day of the Year

In the least
As well as in the greatest of His works
Is ever manifest His presence kind;
As well in swarms of glittering insects, seen
Quick to and from within a foot of air,
Dancing a merry hour, then seen no more,
As in the systems of resplendent worlds,
Through time revolving in unbound space.

Carlos Wilcox

Sunrise/set: 7:51/5:12 Day's Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
Average High/Low: 38/24 Average Temperature: 32
Record High: 62 - 1967 Record Low: - 8 - 1884

Weather
There is a 15 percent chance for highs in the 50s today, thirty percent for 40s, fifteen percent for 30s, twenty-five percent for 20s, fifteen percent for deep cold in the teens or colder. Below-zero mornings occur ten to 15 percent of the time, making this the day most likely to have such conditions so far this winter. The sun appears on only 30 percent of December 18ths. Rain falls 20 percent of the time, snow 25 percent.

Natural Calendar
The Ursid Meteors arrive this week; they are visible near the Big and Little Dippers, the “ursid” or “bear” constellations, through Christmas.

Daybook
1983: I dug carrots and beets from the frozen ground this afternoon. Most were damaged or spoiled from the hard freeze of the past week.

1987: Nice size chubs caught in the pool just below Grinnell Mill dam.

1989: Three nights in a row below zero, and a week of very cold weather have iced the river, leaving just a few patches open. Four inches of snow on the ground, the Japanese honeysuckle blackening as the temperature remains below 20 for days on end.

1992: North along Upper Valley Pike, a soybean field full of crows, maybe a thousand. At home, the finch feeder is consistently full of finches, maybe a fourth of them house finches. Grackles have taken over the suet cage.

1994: In the warm November and December, daffodils have begun to come up along the front sidewalk. Some snow crocus foliage has emerged completely; the plants might even bloom if there is a warm spell soon.

1997: I went west down Jacoby Road to the old bridge foundation, then followed the stream bed toward the swamp. Even though the temperature was only in the low 40s and frost still covered the swamp grass, a moth was out fluttering through the trees. Along the forest floor, chickweed was strong, leaves small but thriving in this mild winter. Moss was starting to grow on a few rotting logs.
Standing by the head of the swamp, I listened to the brook that drained it, the water barely audible, a rustle, shuffle.
Up the path a ways, the first spring came through the hillside surrounded by dark green ragwort; it was a little louder than the brook, its rhythm steady, hollow, with recurring beats.
The next spring, produced a steady, high song through stones, punctuated with plunks. The third spring was mute, stopped by ice and leaves. The fourth spring, the one by the old the springhouse with its broken roof tiles and earth-brown blocks: a soft trickle through the rocks and cress and pool, uneven syncopated ringing.
In the distance, a jet plane and a flock of crows. Then a chickadee in the honeysuckle ahead. Then a train off in Fairborn blowing its urban horn, sounding lonely even here in the sun.
The fifth spring, bubbling out of a cliff that drops from the west side of the path, made a more liquid, fatter sound as it fell maybe ten feet to the rocks and cement and moss and cress of the old man-made pool below. A sound like rain in the eaves.
The sixth spring, the intermittent spring in the small canyon just before I reached the river dam, was dry. The rock formation suggests this must have been a waterfall of icemelt ten ob fifteen millennia ago. Against the silence of this relic, I turned west into the heavy, symphonic sound of the Little Miami River.

1998: The body of a carpenter bee lay frozen on the back porch this morning. He had been tricked, pulled out of his winter nest by yesterday’s warm weather, and then caught in last night’s cold.

2004: Yesterday’s skunk spraying continues to make the house stink!

2005: At 1:30 this morning, a tremendous scratching at the south eaves: some kind of animal broke in, walked around in the attic a while. Then I drifted off to sleep.

2007: Cold this morning in the low 20s, about two inches of snow remaining on the ground. Crows came by at about 7:30, then moved on. The birds are active at the feeders, a few starlings on a Stafford Street black walnut tree, but it is a quiet, frozen day, the sky pale gold, hazy, the sun barely visible through the trees. Sunset last night behind the shed, the far southwest corner of its winter trajectory.

***

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.

From “Winter Time” by Robert Louis Stevenson

December 19th
The 353rd Day of the Year

So short a day, and life so quickly hasting.

Carmina Burana

Sunrise/set: 7:52/5:12 Day's Length: 9 hours 20 minutes
Average High/Low: 38/23 Average Temperature: 31
Record High: 60 - 1895 Record Low: - 16 - 1884

Weather
December 19th brings completely overcast conditions two years out of three, and this date has a 50 percent chance for precipitation, with the odds weighted a bit more towards rain than snow. Today’s distribution of high temperatures: teens or 20s come 30 percent of the time; 30s come 30 percent and 40s another 30 percent, 50s only ten percent. Below-zero mornings occur 15 percent of the time, and morning lows above freezing are equally infrequent.

Natural Calendar
This is the week of the shortest days of the year in Yellow Springs. The sun lies at its lowest point in the noon sky, and it rises and sets at its farthest points south. Solar declination reaches 23 degrees, 26 minutes on December 20th and remains at that position on the 22nd and 23rd. The length of the night grows to 14 hours and 40 minutes (its longest time of all) on the 19th, and that amount of darkness holds through Christmas.

Daybook
1986: Geese continue to fly over town, have let up only a little since middle fall.

1988: South Glen: Southwest wind loud and warm, geese flying back and forth, cumulus tousled, white and gray, low and fast, sparrows swarming in the aster seeds; then I almost stumbled over two people, naked, making love in the dead goldenrod.

1989: Goldenrod seeds about three-fourths gone.

1990: The sparrows are quiet, waiting as I come to take the bird feeder inside to fill. When I go back out and hang it in the tree, the cry goes up, wild chirping.

1992: The crows were still flying east or northeast along the freeway today. This flock must have reached at least three or four miles.

1997: Only a few sparrows chirping in the pear trees on Xenia Avenue this morning. Delicate new blue growth noticed on the junipers by the pond; it must have started in October or November. Beside the junipers, a couple of pale blue pansies are still in bloom.

1999: The koi have finally settled in for winter now, passive as I clean out the pump, unafraid with the slow peace of hibernation. Today I went to mass for the first time in a year, the season, the short days, finally getting to me.

2001: This morning as I was working outside fixing the kitchen table in the sun, a black housefly came and lit on the wood beside me.

2004: Looking back over today’s journal, I wonder what happened to the couple I discovered making love in the field at South Glen back in 1988. Do they remember the day like I do? Is their ritual as durable as mine?

December 20th
The 354th Day of the Year

The dark
rooms hold our heads on pillows, waiting
day, through the snow falling and fallen
in the darkness between inconsecutive
dreams. The brain burrows in the earth
and sleeps, trusting dawn....

Wendell Berry

Sunrise/set 7:53/5:13 Day's Length: 9 hours 20 minutes
Average High/Low:38/23 Average Temperature: 31
Record High: 63 - 1895 Record Low: - 12 - 1963

Weather
There is a 50 percent chance for clear or partly clear
conditions today, but rain comes 25 percent of the time, snow 20 percent. This morning and the morning of the 26th are the most likely (about 20 percent likely) to record below-zero temperatures in all December. High temperatures are in the teens 20 percent of the time, in the 20s ten percent, in the 30s twenty percent, in the 40s thirty percent, and two out of every ten December 20ths provide a thaw in the 50s or 60s.

Natural Calendar
In the dark afternoons in December, orchids are in their prime. Under lights, in a greenhouse, or in a south window, most varieties bloom before Christmas.

Daybook
1984: On a walk downtown, new iris foliage seen. They are pacing
fresh candy-lily leaves by the front fence.

1987: Two-inch iris growth seen. A muskrat sighted above Grinnell Mill dam; the river is low and clear, even after two days of hard rain. Birds active and loud around the yard.

1989: A sundog in the west at 4:30. Long flock of crows seen heading east from Springfield. Do they follow the highway because the road follows some ancient natural flyway?

1994: Down the path from Grinnell swamp, moss has sent out its orange flower stems as though March were here.

1997: I watched the sun come over the east horizon at 8:14 this morning. The houses across the street hide it for 20 minutes after its official rising time on my charts.

1998: Mother-of-millions is budding in the greenhouse. Outside in the pond, algae grows thick in the shallow end, and the waterfall slows to a trickle, the pump filling with late-autumn sludge.

1999: Rain in the dark morning, autumn drought ending, the rivers finally filling below Grinnell Bridge.

2004: The skunk odor from the 17th has finally subsided. Overnight, a deep cold wave came through, pushing temperatures down to near zero. The pond pump stopped, and the water froze over. I had to go out and break the ice with a hammer. The pond heater soon brought some stability.

December 21st
The 355th Day of the Year

One season always leads to the next.
Each phase of the year is a promise of the phase to come
and a repetition of a previous phase,
a sure turn of the unbreakable cycle of the year.
The most difficult thing for me in winter is to stay where I am,
and to keep from looking ahead into spring.
It is hard to hold steady, and to accept
the bare tangle of branches,
the soft secrecy of the buds, the sleek cones of the catkins,
which perfectly contain both birth and death.
It is hard to remain in place
in the certainty of these things here and now:
the cold river, the damp wind, the finite sky,
the everlasting bouquets of spent flowers, the precious frost,
not seeing past the horizon, not finding God-to-come,
free from the need for summer, self-sufficient,
knowing the wheel will come back
here as well as there,
to this tight and impeccable close,
to the far green paradise of June.

Bill Felker

Sunrise/set: 7:53/5:13 Day's Length: 9 hours 20 minutes
Average High/Low: 38/23 Average Temperature: 30
Record High: 65 - 1967 Record Low: - 15 - 1989

Weather
Skies are overcast five years in ten. Snow falls one year in five, rain one year in four. Highs in 60s occur five percent of the time, 50s twenty percent, 40s five percent. Chilly days in the 30s come 55 percent of the time, and there is a five percent chance each for highs only in the 20s, teens, and single- digits. Lows drop below freezing three fourths of the nights, but below-zero temperatures come only once or twice in a decade on this date.

The Week Ahead
Two major cold waves ordinarily dominate this time of the year. The first front comes in on the 21st or 22nd, and the second arrives between the 23rd and the 26th. Christmas Day is typically the brightest day of the week, bringing a 70 percent chance for sun. The 28th is the darkest day, with a 70 percent chance for clouds. Snow falls half the time on Christmas Eve and on the two days before New Year's Day. The 26th is typically the coldest day of the week and has almost a 40 percent chance for highs just in the teens or 20s.

Natural Calendar:
An Approximate Schedule of Cardinal Song
from Winter Solstice to Summer Solstice

I have learned to trust the processes that take time, to value change that is not sudden or ill-considered but grows out of the ground of experience. Such change is properly defined as conversion, a word that at its root connotes not a change of essence but of perspective, as turning round; turning back to or returning; turning one’s attention to.

Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

As the solar year ends in December, early mornings are quiet in Yellow Springs. The cardinals sleep late, singing sporadically after about 7:40 a.m. By the middle of January, however, the steady growth of the day’s length triggers the mating cycle, and cardinal song begins to consistently precede sunrise by about half an hour through equinox. When April approaches, the birds rise even earlier, sometimes calling an hour before dawn. By the end of the end of May, most cardinals reach their limit around 4:00 a.m. After that, they settle into the longest days of the year, sleeping a little later in the mornings, their music softening as the nights grow longer.
The following schedule, based on observations in Yellow Springs over several decades, sketches the approximate parallel of cardinal song to sunrise. Temperature, cloud cover, precipitation and, most likely, individual birds all significantly influence the song times, sometimes changing them by 15 or 20 minutes. Still, the overall pattern is predictable, and it provides one more context for natural history as well as for spiritual geography (both of which Kathleen Norris ties to conversion).

Day Sunrise First Cardinal Song
December 21 7:53 a.m. 7:40 a.m.
January 1 7:57 a.m. 7:40 a.m.
January 10 7:57 a.m. 7:30 a.m.
January 26 7:49 a.m. 7:22 a.m.
January 31 7:45 a.m. 7:20 a.m.
February 3 7:42 a.m. 7:15 a.m.
February 5 7:40 a.m. 7:10 a.m.
February 9 7:36 a.m. 7:04 a.m.
February 16 7:27 a.m. 6:57 a.m.
February 20 7:22 a.m. 6:45 a.m.
March 3 7:06 a.m. 6:33 a.m.
March 9 6:57 a.m. 6:30 a.m.
March 13 6:50 a.m. 6:16 a.m.
March 20 6:39 a.m. 6:10 a.m.
March 24 6:33 a.m. 6:02 a.m.
March 27 6:28 a.m. 5:55 a.m.
March 31 6:21 a.m. 5:44 a.m.
April 2 6:18 a.m. 5:34 a.m.
April 16 5:56 a.m. 5:12 a.m.
April 21 5:49 a.m. 5:05 a.m.
May 2 5:34 a.m. 4:43 a.m.
May 19 5:17 a.m. 4:07 a.m.
May 23 5:14 a.m. 4:04 a.m.
June 21 5:06 a.m. 4:04 a.m.

All times are given in Eastern Standard Time.

Daybook
1983: Jacoby: I walked the whole swamp easily today because of
the ice. Everything was frozen over except the stream channels.
Skunk cabbage was up three or four inches in some places, blackened from the cold. Dock, leafcup, buttercup, mint, ragwort and henbit foliage was burned and prostrate from the week- long cold wave, but water cress was bright and green, frozen in the ice. On the high ground, one fern, apparently unhurt by the weather, was sticking out from under a snow-covered log.

1990: In the warmth and rain, a rose has formed a large, red bud above the brittle mums by Neysa's west window.

1993: The witch hazel on Dayton Street has kept its color through the month. I wonder if it's really still blooming, or if the golden petals are petrified in the cold and will hang on dead until spring.

1999: First real cold weather of the winter, temperatures only rising to the middle 20s; single digits tonight. I put the heater into the pond, the west end of the water all iced over. The ground was hard, bumpy with the frozen mole hills and grass clumps when I went out to get wood tonight. Crows and seagulls in Springfield bring the landscape alive.

2000: Last of the maple leaves are finally down.

2004: At dawn on this solstice, I watched from our bedroom window as the sun came up in the southeast from the crook of the Danielson’s maple tree over the edge of Mrs. Timberlake’s house. The skunk catching man showed up at 11:00 a.m., set traps to catch the animals that have been causing problems under the house. “They’ll be out tonight,” he said. “There’s a front coming in, and they’ll be scavenging.”

 

December 22nd
The 356th Day of the Year

See, Winter comes to rule the varied year….

James Thomson

Sunrise/set: 7:54/5:14 Day's Length: 9 hours 20 minutes
Average High/Low: 38/23 Average Temperature: 30
Record High: 62 - 1941 Record Low: - 20 - 1989

Weather
Highs are above 50 ten percent of the time today, and they reach into the 40s forty percent of the time. Thirties occur 30 percent of the afternoons; ten percent of the time, highs are only in the 20s; on ten percent of the days they do not get above ten degrees. Below-zero temperatures come only five percent of the mornings, but 65 percent of the days bring lows below 32 degrees. Chances for rain or snow remain steady at 45 percent.

Natural Calendar
This is the last of the days on which the sun’s declination remains steady at its lowest of the year, 23 degrees and 26 minutes below the ecliptic. Starting on the 23rd, the day begins and ends a little bit further to the north every 24 hours. On Christmas, it moves another minute. On the feast of St. Stephen (the 26th) it rises a full two minutes (there are 60 minutes in a degree), and then its ascent takes on greater and greater momentum, changing a more than five minutes in a day by the 1st, about ten minutes in a day by January 15th, up to 20 minutes a day by February.
A tree, outbuilding, or neighbor's chimney is suitable for tracking solar movement as December comes to a close. The further north the sun progresses from the chosen landmark, the higher it will be at lunch time, the closer spring will be.

Daybook
1986: The first mother-of-millions flowers in the greenhouse. Geese fly over at 5:20 p.m.

1988: Two robins seen in the yard this afternoon, and more heard in the neighborhood. Crows pass over from time to time. Sparrows waited in the poplar for me to come and feed them. Privets still hold their leaves on Dayton Street. First mother-of-millions flowered today.

1989: Record cold, 30 below on my thermometer. Everything quiet until noon, then a wren came out to look for seeds along the south garden wall.

1992: Springfield: At first, I saw just a small group of crows in a soybean field not far from Springfield-Xenia Road. Then an hour later as I drove along Upper Valley Pike, I came onto a great flock of crows flying overhead, its source lost in the southwest, its destination stretching into the southeast. Tonight, Uncle Bill called from northern Minnesota: sunrise, he said, was 8:15, sunset 4:37, and the wind chill was dropping toward 60 below. Tomorrow, he said, the days would begin to lengthen.

1998: Yesterday, a heavy all-day rain with highs in the 50s, and today the barometer is up to 30.60, temperatures not even making it out of the teens. At noon I went out to the car to go downtown, and on the driveway, still alive, an earthworm was trying to work its way to soft ground. I picked it up and tucked it under a stone where the ground did not seem frozen yet. At the mall, a robin was looking for red crab apples among the parking lot trees.

1999: The brightest full moon in 133 years, with perigee, and perihelion nearing, cast clear, black shadows of the apple tree and the locust trees on the frozen lawn at five o’clock this morning.

2000: Walk to the Yellow Spring in the snow with Buttercup. Stillness and drifting flurries, large flakes, the landscape so changed by the winter that once I felt lost even though I was going down a path I had walked dozens of times before. I remembered the time I got lost hunting in my favorite woods in Wisconsin, how I panicked and started planning how I would spend the night. I was only a few yards from the road, but the snow was so heavy that my earlier tracks had filled up. The sky was uniformly gray, visibility only a few yards, everything unfamiliar, every landmark transformed.

2003: Flocks of grackles have been performing graceful acrobatics all month. I took them for granted before. Now every time I drive somewhere, I see them playing in the sky.

2004: Twelve inches of snow today, the whole region has shut down.

2007: Gerry and Carey visiting from Philadelphia: we all walked downtown in the mild, 55-degree afternoon. When they came by last year, the weather was the same.

December 23rd
The 357th Day of the Year

Shine warmly down, thou sun of noon-time,
On this chill pageant, melt and move
The winter’s frozen heart with love.
And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing,
Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze,
Thy prophecy of summer days.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Sunrise/set: 7:54/5:14 Day's Length: 9 hours 20 minutes
Average High/Low: 37/22 Average Temperature: 30
Record High: 59 - 1957 Record Low: - 8 - 1960

Weather
Highs in the 50s are more likely today than on most December days, such warmth occurring 20 percent of the years. Many afternoons, however, are chilly. There is a 25 percent chance for 40s, forty percent chance for 30s, fifteen percent chance for highs only in the teens. Chances for precipitation are 35 percent, a drop from yesterday's 50 percent. Completely overcast conditions darken the landscape five years in ten on this date.

Natural Calendar
Orchard grass, goldenrod, foxtail, Japanese knotweed, dock, virgin's bower, pepper grass, penny cress, garlic mustard, velvet leaf, mallow, Queen Anne's lace, parsnip, milkweed, water horehound, motherwort, bergamot, ironweed, jimson weed, mullein, yarrow, black-eyed Susan, burdock, cattail, dogbane, and teasel are some of the most common plants still available for dried winter bouquets.

Daybook
1982: Forget-me-not foliage still strong, a few chard plants still alive, as are the purple deadnettle and chickweed, henbit, dandelion, parsley, chives, cheeses, garlic mustard.

1988: In the warm afternoon, cardinals sang off and on. Tips of crocus were coming up in front of the bookstore downtown. In the yard, multiflora rose buds looked ready to open. Standing against my back door, I watched the sun setting between the two osage trees at the far corner of the yard, 240 degrees on my compass, exactly southwest. Geese flew over at 5:17 p.m.

1991: Some broccoli and Brussels sprouts still hold.

1993: Bitter cold moved in yesterday, but Diana reports hundreds of robins in the Antioch School trees. Are they the ones I've been seeing in the Glen - or a lost flock still moving south - or one disoriented, coming north two months early?

1999: The fallen leaves are coming apart now, letting go of their shapes, dissolving back into the ground. I can’t tell a box elder from a maple or an osage or mulberry leaf. The leaves accept the rain, their resilience turned to receptivity by the cold. Their surfaces have become porous and absorbent, sometimes skeletal, letting all the weather through, offering no resistance. In the north garden, the ferns have fallen across the hostas, providing a mantle of protective mulch. Amaranth is bowing to set its seeds, the weakening of the stalk contributing to the planting. Black pokeberries dangle on their soft, dried stems. Foxtail grasses cling to one another, wave in the wind like lost caterpillars. Snapdragons finally succumb to the cold, their foliage dark green with the freeze. Japanese honeysuckle leaves are blackening. The crisp zinnias are almost looking windswept in their rigor mortis.

2002: Raccoon killed on Dayton-Yellow Springs road last night.

2003: Jean reports about a dozen turkey vultures in a tree by the riding center this morning, 8:00 a.m.

2004: Four-plus more inches of snow fell overnight, making the total around 16 inches here in Yellow Springs – the most significant snowfall in local recorded history.

2005: Cardinal singing when I went out to get wood this morning at 7:50.

2007: A hard wind blew this morning in the dark, pushing against the house for what must have been about ten minutes. The bamboo scraped and screeched against the greenhouse wall. Hard rain followed, rain so hard I thought it must have been ice or sleet; checking outside, I found only the flooded sidewalk. Walking with Bella in the alley in daylight, squirrels were common (which they have not been this winter), but no grackles seen or heard. Most of Mateo’s small white aster plants have lost their seeds. At the bird feeder, the sparrow flock was ravenous, as usual.

 

December 24th
The 358th Day of the Year

Once again at Christmas did we weave
the holly round the Christmas hearth;
the silent snow possessed the earth
and calmly fell our Christmas Eve.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sunrise/set: 7:55/5:15 Day's Length: 9 hours 20 minutes
Average High/Low: 37/22 Average Temperature: 30
Record High: 66 - 1964 Record Low: -15 - 1983

Weather
Christmas Eve brings precipitation 50 percent of all the years, but a white Christmas comes more like 35 percent of the time (since sometimes that precipitation arrives in the form of rain). Although 20 percent of the days are mild in the 50s or 60s, the 24th is one of the few Ohio days in which a below-zero high has been recorded (in the bitter winter of 1983). Forty-five percent of the time temperatures warm to the 30s or 40s, with 20s occurring 20 percent of the afternoons, and teens on ten percent. Odds for sun are 50/50.

Natural Calendar
On December 2nd, sunset time in Yellow Springs reached its earliest of the year, 5:10 p.m., and it kept that same time through the 13th. Then on the 14th, sunset started to occur a minute later for the first time since June 23rd, gaining two of the minutes that it lost during the autumn (but later sunrise offset the sunset's gain, and so night still continued to lengthen). Now on the 24th of December, the sun begins its journey toward May, shifting from the declination of 23 degrees, 26 minutes to 23 degrees, 25 minutes. The day itself will start to lengthen on the 26th.

Daybook
1984: Geese flew over just before sundown, a little after 5:00. Hepatica reported blooming in the Glen.

1985: First striped-breasted sparrow seen at the bird feeder.

1987: One or two pussy willow catkins have cracked in the warmth. Crocus are starting to push up through the mulch. Purple deadnettle is growing back. After dark, I surprised a flock of sparrows sleeping in the mock orange. They exploded away through the branches.

l988: Geese fly over just before sundown.

1995: After a week and a half of snow and below-freezing temperatures, dead osage leaves finally fall from their branches (the frost had killed them in early November) and lie about on top of the snow.

1997: Rain all day and temperatures in the 40s. Judy reports a blizzard moving down from Chicago. Here the wind is gusting. Sparrows and squirrels eating sunflower seeds by the pond this gray afternoon. Downtown, a few pear leaves still hold on stubbornly. In the greenhouse, the mother-of-millions are in full bloom.

1998: The weather finally has turned cold, but I found an earthworm by the side of the road this morning. He had been driven out of his December den by yesterday’s heavy rain. Now, half frozen, he was attempting to traverse a wasteland of pebbles along High Street.
I knelt and took the earthworm, held him against the warmth of my palm, then set him over in the garden where the sun had heated up the ground a little. I scratched the surface of the dirt to give him a start on his descent. I covered him with grass and twigs to protect him from solar rays, and left him to make his way.

2000: Crows at 8:15 a.m. making tremendous racket in the back trees. Song sparrow noticed by the feeder. Tonight, as we sat with the candles lit after supper, a camel-back cricket came hopping down the hall. Good luck this Christmas Eve.

2003: Returning from Goshen, Indiana, we saw only one sparrow hawk.

2007: Crows at 7:45 this morning, three large hawks seen on fences as we returned from Columbus.

December 25th
The 359th Day of the Year

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's Birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome;
Then no planets strike, no fairy takes,
Nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

William Shakespeare

Sunrise/set: 7:55/5:15 Day's Length: 9 hours 20 minutes
Average High/Low:37/22 Average Temperature: 29
Record High: 65 - 1893 Record Low: -13 - 1983

Weather
Christmas day is generally cold and partly sunny, snow remaining on the ground three to four years in ten. The arrival of the fifth high pressure system of the month often brings flurries. Chances for highs in the 60s are only five percent. Forties come another five percent of the time, 30s forty percent, 20s or below 50 percent. One Christmas per quarter century remains below zero. The sun appears 60 percent of all the years.

Natural Calendar
Sometimes a fat camel-back cricket will emerge in the kitchen at night, searching for crumbs. In the chicken house, pullets that will produce summer eggs are hatching. In the warmth of greenhouses, bedding plant seeding is fully underway, and young plants scheduled to be sold in April and May can have four to six leaves.

Daybook
1982: Record warm temperatures throughout the East and Midwest, 63 in Yellow Springs. Mint found half a foot high in Mint Hollow.

1983: Record cold. The pond was frozen, the first time I've seen it like that since we came. Two boys were playing on the ice. Geese were huddled together at the far shore.

1985: Geese restless this morning. I could hear them flying near Ellis Pond.

1990: Splitting Osage at sunset, half moon and Aldebaran in the orange sky, temperatures into the teens, and my breath white, I feel like I'm closing in on the rhythm. I feel that everything could be right here in front of me. I felt the same way after I read Kiser's fishing and weather journal, his plain, simple entries, life reduced to this and that. Everything I need is right in front of me. Limits are clear and distinct this cold Christmas evening. Things mean what they are. I don't need myths, allegories, metaphors. These are the same stars and moon that shone on Bethlehem. Jesus must be here beside me.

1991: A cardinal sang in the dark, maybe half an hour before dawn.

1995: Six inches of snow on the ground, gentle flurries all day accumulating a little on the shoveled sidewalk. The Christmas cold front approaches on schedule, the windows frosting up.

1997: A crow passes through the yard 7:35 a.m. Cardinal sings for almost a minute at 8:30 a.m. After yesterday’s two-inch rain, the land is soft. A worm was forced out of the ground, drowned in a puddle. The koi in the pond were given a Christmas meal: they rose to the top to feed for the first time in maybe six weeks.

1998: At the celebration of the Immaculate Conception several weeks ago, I gave myself to the insanity, to that feast of illogic.
My religion is often an indulgence of unknowing, an acceptance of the absurd. That such an attitude could foster any bizarre position, good or evil, I am well aware. But I hold few dogmas or certainties, and I allow myself to be swept along in ridiculous, untenable Revelation.
Did I believe that night at mass? I gave in, collapsed, pleaded, assented, hoped, entered. Overcome by these darkest days, I allowed my most primitive instincts to take over. I don’t know if I saw divinity or simply felt a surge of maudlin belonging, but good sense gave way to a kind of love.
I knew, of course, that my reaction was culturally conditioned, that the Star, like all the stars, was partial to the season and tide, and that it only appeared when the sky was clear and from the perspective of whatever longitude.
But with a leap of unreason and of longing, I emerged from church into the cold night, aroused to proclaim neither Immaculate Conception nor Virgin Birth, but rather to bask in their strange protection. Wrapped in their unbelievable blue mantle, I defiantly walked toward the mysterious and frightening forces that lay outside my control, waiting for me in the year to come.

2003: A small flock of crows flew southeast over the house about 8:00 a.m. this morning.

2004: Eight below zero on the 24th, ten below this morning, the coldest Christmas Eve and Christmas in many years.

2006: A mild December and days of rain have brought the snowdrops and daffodils up to two inches in the front garden.

2007: Crows at 7:45 again this morning. No cardinals heard in a long time. Clear and chilly this morning, mild this afternoon. Tat says 28 inches of snow are on the ground in Madison, but the grass is green and bare in Goshen, Indiana.

Blessing of galaxies, blessing of stars:
Great stars, small stars, red stars, blue ones.
Blessing of nebula, blessing of supernova,
Planets, satellites, asteroids, comets.
Blessing of our sun and moon, blessing of our earth,
Oceans, rivers, continents, mountain ranges.
Blessing of wind and cloud, blessing of rain,
Fog bank, snowdrift, lightning and thunder.

Chinook Psalter

December 26th
The 360th Day of the Year

The cycle of time is born again.
The months begin their march.
The earth will give its gifts untilled,
Wandering ivy, foxglove, colocasia, laughing acanthus.
Untended she-goats freely bear their milk.
The snake and poison plant will perish,
The plains turn gold with corn.
Grapes will redden on the briar.
Oaks will drip with honey.

Virgil

Sunrise/set: 7:55/5:16 Day's Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
Average High/Low: 37/22 Average Temperature: 29
Record High: 62 - 1889 Record Low: - 6 - 1983

Weather
The 26th brings highs in the 40s thirty percent of the time, highs in the 30s on 30 percent of the afternoons, 20s on another 30 percent, and teens on the remaining ten percent. Skies are completely cloudy two years out of three on this date. Snow falls a third of the time, but rain is rare. Chances for a morning below zero are 20 percent, 95 percent for a morning below freezing.

The Week Ahead
The last days of the year are typically dominated by the Christmas cold front, which chills the 26th and 27th, then moderates as the first high-pressure system of the new year approaches, bringing a 40 percent chance of highs in the 40s or above. After the passage of the January 1st weather system, highs remain below 40
on 80 percent of the afternoons. The likelihood of precipitation increases as the old year fades. From a 35 percent chance of rain or snow on the 27th, chances increase to a 55 percent chance on the 31st.

Natural Calendar
Along the 40th parallel, the rate at which sunset becomes later now outstrips the rate at which sunrise becomes later, and the days start to lengthen on the 26th; they will continue to grow at the rate of about seven minutes a week until January 15th. After that, night recedes a little better than two minutes every day all the way to early summer.

Daybook
1982: Mint is five inches high in parts of the garden patch.

1983: Most rivers are frozen. Skaters have been out on the ice behind the Grinnell Mill Dam.

1985: Yellow Springs Creek is frozen in places. Two weeks of early deep winter have hurt the watercress at Jacoby, but the ragwort is still holding.

1986: No cardinals heard today, but I saw a very large flock of crows along the Xenia highway.

1987: Fishing with dough balls north of Jacoby this morning, no bites at all. The woods were quiet except for a few crows. I saw a pair of ducks up river. At home, sparrows were all over the honeysuckles, sang all afternoon.

1988: On the day after Christmas, I retreated to the swamp. With all the ice, it was easy to walk across to the cattails from where the cowslips had bloomed in April. Foliage of the dock, leafcup, buttercups and ragwort was burned and limp from the cold, but the watercress was still bright green - even when it was frozen solid in the streams. Red rose hips stood out against the white sycamore bark. A whip-poor-will sang on the other side of the road. Two kingfishers came screaming down the river. I saw one mallard, new mint, osage fruits broken apart by squirrels, empty milkweed pods, and a honeybee drowned in the pond. At home, crocus spears have come up behind the garden wall.

1989: A cardinal heard today, 11:55 a.m. Just one more month until they begin to sing before dawn.

1992: No crows seen at Springfield. Occasional flocks of starlings noticed as I drove through Indiana.

1997: North to Goshen. Flocks of crows and swarms starlings on the five-hour drive. The sky: stratus opacus uniformis from Yellow Springs to northern Indiana. Occasionally some undulatus visible. Patches of pale green winter wheat gave the land its only spring color.

2003: To South Glen at 9:00 a.m. The sun was rising over the river, the sky was pale blue, the woods golden in the morning, the river high and dark, the ground mottled with leaves and snow. As soon as I approached Sycamore Hole, a flock of maybe a dozen mallards flew off quacking. As I walked west down the path, I was surrounded by continuous cardinal song, the rattling of woodpeckers, the distant call of crows and the cackling of grackles, the chirping of a few sparrows, the chatter of a downy woodpecker, or maybe it was a kingfisher. When I came home, I saw a robin in the front yard peeping. A large flock of crows flew south over the house a little before 4:00 this afternoon.

2004: Casey called about 9:30 this morning, told me to go out and look in the southeast: “There’re three sundogs!” he said. And I went out with the phone in my hand, and he directed me almost overhead to the first half rainbow, then lower, a second, smaller sundog. The third was a bright spot in the clouds right above the sun. “Lordy be!” joked Casey. “What kind of year are we going to have!” Even though he was joking, there was something in his voice that betrayed a fundamental sense of awe and trepidation.

2006: Doves heard calling in the mild 40-degree morning. Crows pass through most days. Cardinals sometimes sing before 8:00 a.m.

2007: Crows came by at 7:30 and 7:45 this morning, the sky above clear, a ragged bank of gray alto stratus clouds in the east, Venus over them in the southeast.

The world is porous. Gods are everywhere. Intention is life. Soul is flesh. Winter is nurture. Presence enfolds. Step is communion. Touch is thanksgiving. The dead are alive.

Hepatica Sun, The Skunk Cabbage Manifesto

December 27th
The 361st Day of the Year

O Winter, ruler of the inverted year...
I crown thee King of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness.

William Cowper

Sunrise/set: 7:56/5:17 Day's Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
Average High/Low: 36/21 Average Temperature: 29
Record High: 64 - 1959 Record Low: - 4 - 1950

Weather
A slight warming trend begins today four years in ten, and it sometimes continues until the 1st of January. On the 27th and 28th, highs reach the 50s or 60s twenty percent of the time, and below-zero lows are rare. Colder weather is certainly not unusual for this date, however. Fifteen percent of the days are in the 40s, forty percent are in the 30s, and another 25 percent in the 20s or teens. Clouds continue to dominate the sky, and snow or sleet comes 35 percent of the days.

Natural Calendar
An hour before sunrise, Orion has set. Sirius has moved deep into the west, Cancer and Gemini following it. The Big Dipper is overhead. June‘s Arcturus is coming in from the east, and August’s Vega has risen in the northeast.

Daybook
1986: No cardinals heard today.

1987: Fishing at the river’s far bend: one bite then quiet. At Sycamore Hole, a shiner on every cast. No sound in the woods until the middle of the afternoon, then one cardinal song.

1988: A cardinal sang three or four times this warm and sunny afternoon. The columbine against the south wall grew a new leaf. Forget-me-nots, mint, wild onion, henbit, moneywort, clover, celandine, plantain, dock, ragwort were all thick and lush. Crocus was up more than an inch. Some pussy willows were breaking out.

1989: Some of the photographs taped to my notebook remind me of the exhilaration I felt on my walks, the brilliant greens of the cress, fog along the gray river, the broken trees at Jacoby black from the rain, all of the contrasts so intense, my own excitement inseparable from those colors and contrasts, and I laugh because I can't believe it is making me so happy, the thought of the exquisitely gloomy, cold swamp.

1992: A few cabbages still alive and firm through town. Geese fly over south end of town at sunset.

1995: I picked a pussy willow branch picked to use as a model for sketching, the buds tight and red.

1997: After light flurries, the stratus clouds break up, become a variety of cumulus, stratocumulus, nimbostratus, altostratus. Then the nimbostratus dominate, and there is a little rain and wet snow.

1999: The leaves are coming apart, letting go of their shapes, dissolving back into the ground. I can’t tell a box elder leaf from a maple or an Osage or mulberry. The fallen foliage accepts the rain now, its July resilience softened by the winter. Its surfaces have become passive and absorbent, sometimes skeletal, letting all the weather through. In the north garden, the ferns have come down across the hostas in a protective mantle. Amaranth is bowing to set its seeds. Black pokeberries dangle on their hollow stems. The heads of foxtail grass cling to one another, wave in the wind like lost caterpillars. Stubborn snapdragons and Japanese honeysuckles are finally giving in, blackening with the cold.

2003: The jade trees in the greenhouse are still in full bloom. The purple wandering Jews are budding. As I let the dog out the back door before sunrise, I heard cardinal singing. Walking the dog later, I heard sparrows chirping, grackles cackling. On their early walk, Jean and Dianne counted 40 buzzards by the riding center about 8:00 a.m. – obviously part of the migration did not take place. And the past several years have produced vulture sightings deep into November.

2004: Cardinals singing off and on throughout the thaw, accentuating the increase in their songs during December this year. Is this a complement to the buzzards staying year round? Along the hedge, the Japanese honeysuckle has been blackened by the Christmas cold.

2005: Early December’s cold has given way to thaw. The old season was covered and sealed; now with the snow gone, the land has been transformed. Mild midwinter temperatures reveal a gateway to spring.
In many ways, nothing has changed over the past few weeks. The trees are still bare, and no new sprouts have appeared in the undergrowth. Pussy willow catkins are thin and tight. Forsythia buds show no hint of their February blush.
Autumn’s fruits, however, are giving way to the weather, measuring the advance of the Northern Hemisphere back toward the sun. The feathery heads of virgin’s bower, soft and thick in late November, have blown away in the wind. The hosta pods are almost empty. The final rose of Sharon seeds lie precariously in their open calices. Worn tufts of ironweed are half gone.
The heads of purple coneflowers and zinnias, tough and unyielding a month ago, crumble between my fingers. Honeysuckle and euonymus berries still hang to their branches, but their flush and firmness are gone. In the greenhouse, the fall blossoms have withered on the Christmas cacti. The flowers are done blooming on one jade tree, starting to decline on the other.
As the thaw deepens, remnants of the past year no longer point to the warmth of last October. The sharp yucca, tall and bright green, does not look back to June, but forward to June. In the pond, wild iris spears that braved weeks of ice stand strong around the broken strands of lizard’s tail. As the bamboo in the south garden recovers from the weight of the snow, it shows sweet rockets, henbit, great mullein, celandine, wild lettuce, dock, sweet Williams and lamb’s ear waiting for April and May.

2007: Rain and mild this morning, crows sleeping in a bit, fly over at about five to eight. A rose-breasted nuthatch seen briefly at the east garden feeder while we were having lunch with Neysa and Sebastien.

December 28th
The 362nd Day of the Year

In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and sentiments and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses.

John Burroughs

Sunrise/set: 7:56/5:17 Day's Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
Average High/Low: 36/21 Average Temperature: 29
Record High: 63 - 1996 Record Low: - 6 - 1924

Weather
Chances for highs in the 60s are 15 percent; mild 40s occur 30 percent of the days, and afternoons in the 30s come on 45 percent, leaving very little room for severe weather. The sky is almost always cloudy on the 28th, and there is just a 30 percent chance for even partly sunny conditions. Rain is more frequent than snow, coming 20 percent of the time; flurries occur just five to ten percent of the time.

Natural Calendar
New daffodil, crocus, and tulip leaves lie just below the surface of the mulch. Dock, leafcup, buttercup, mint, ragwort, sweet rocket, plantain, thistles, great mullein, moneywort, red clover, celandine, forget-me-not, wild onion, purple deadnettle, and henbit foliage push every-so-gradually toward March. Deep in the woods, the earthstar fungus appears, shaped like a six-pointed star. Multiflora rose buds swell in the sun.

Daybook
1982: Crocus growing after a warm spell. Foliage of the pansies and primroses, wild mallow, mint, wild onion, ivy, moneywort, clover, plantain, celandine continues to thrive. A few pussy willows are emerging.

1985: Long flock of geese seen as I drove around Chicago.

1988: A warm late December like 1982; columbine in the yard even growing a new leaf.

1996: Highs were in the 60s today. Jean and I went for a bike ride down to Antioch School, and this afternoon I worked outside until supper. There was even sun to go along with the mild temperatures! At five o’clock, as I stood in the door of the workshop, I saw a tan moth fluttering around the wood pile. Tonight, a fat cricket went jumping across the kitchen floor. In the garden, the chives I transplanted toward the end of last month seem to have died, but the garlic cloves planted at the same time are sending down roots.

1997: A few rust-colored leaves still hold to the beech tree, but the pears are finally completely bare.

2002: A long hard cardinal song in the gray morning, temperature 30 degrees. Then silence.

2003: A sunny and mild day. Sparrows were chirping when I walked Bella this morning. I saw a flock of crows crossing the freeway as I drove to Columbus early this afternoon.

2005: Thunder this morning about 7:00. A flock of robins in the yard at 10:30. The sun was out for a while, highs into the middle 50s.

2006: Titmouse heard for several mornings now. Doves seen in the back trees, maybe paired for spring?

2007: Crows at 7:45 a.m. once again. Sparrows, chickadees and cardinals about, but no birdsong in the mornings.

December 29th
The 363rd Day of the Year

Virtue alone, my Love,
Will warm us in the Winter of old Age.

Fray Manuel de Navarrete

Sunrise/set: 7:56/5:18 Day's Length: 9 hours 22 minutes
Average High/Low: 36/21 Average Temperature: 28
Record High: 68 - 1889 Record Low: - 5 - 1983

Weather
There is a ten percent chance for a high in the 60s today, 15 percent for 50s, fifteen percent for 40s, forty percent for 30s, fifteen percent for 20s, five percent for teens. The sun appears on four days in ten, and precipitation, most often in the form of rain across southwestern Ohio, occurs one day in three.

Natural Calendar
As the weather gets colder, wild game moves to areas where cover is thickest. For deer, mating season is over. White-tailed bucks have their gray winter coats now, and they are starting to drop their antlers. On the farm, expectant ewes, does and cows nurture their babies to be born a few weeks from now in late winter or early spring.

Daybook
1983: The deep cold has turned the Japanese honeysuckle black.
All the leaves have dropped from the forsythia. Doves and sparrows huddle in the frozen garden.

1986: First striped breasted sparrow seen (song sparrow).

1988: The sun comes up over the Yellow Springs horizon at 8:20 a.m., 25 minutes after its official rising time. I can first see it at an azimuth of about 120 degrees, east-southeast. From the front door, it appears right at the far edge of the Danielsons’ roof. At noon, it lies over Nate's chimney at 170 degrees, not quite due south. It disappears into the crook of the corner Osage tree, 240 degrees, at 5:01 p.m.

1996: In the greenhouse, whiteflies have taken over the tomatoes, and spider mites eat the impatiens. There is chaos in the plantings, as much decay as growth, Christmas cacti are still blooming, but so many of the plants have withered from root disease or insects. January brings the clearing out, the leaving behind of last summer’s plants, the starting of the new.

1998: Barometer dropping, rain off and on. The ice has melted on the surface of the pond, the heater no longer needed. Working inside all day, I heard no birds. The feeders have been empty for a while; only one squirrel came to check for food. Mother-of-millions still haven’t flowered, but their buds are big. The Christmas cacti are done, all but a few blossoms withered. Whiteflies held in check by regular spraying. The tomatoes in the greenhouse are strong: I have enough to give away or make spaghetti sauce with. Chard and peppers also hold well so far in the greenhouse.

2003: A soft, cloudy morning, temperature near 50 degrees, barometer dropping, rain on the way. A cardinal singing and starlings chirping when I went outside about 8:30.

2006: Walking Bella at 8:30 this warm morning, I saw robins, heard titmice and cardinals calling steadily.

2007: Crows at 8:15 this morning, the sky gray and the air chilly and damp. The landscape has become sodden from the recent thaws and rains, part spring, part late fall, the grass greening, the fallen leaves darkening, Osage fruits becoming speckled with age, coralberries becoming paler, bittersweet hulls almost all fallen, the orange berries looking like honeysuckle berries now.

December 30th
The 364th Day of the Year

Love to daily uses wed
Shall be sweetly perfected.
Life by repetition grows
Unto its appointed close:
Day to day fulfills one year.

Francis Thompson

Sunrise/set: 7:56/5:19 Day's Length: 9 hours 23 minutes
Average High/Low: 36/21 Average Temperature: 28
Record High: 63 - 1972 Record Low: - 9 - 1983

Weather
Highs in the 60s come five percent of the time, 50s come another five percent, 40s thirty percent, 30s forty percent, 20s ten percent, teens five percent, single digits five percent. Today is partly sunny two years out of three, but rain or snow occurs half of all the days in my record. Lows fall below freezing 55 percent of the nights, and below-zero temperatures occur one night in 20.

Natural Calendar
The heating season in Yellow Springs typically lasts from the middle of October through the middle of April, depending on the character of the year. The cold is created by approximately 37 cold fronts passing through the region between the third week of October and the third week of April. By today, 17 of those fronts have normally arrived, almost half the season.

Daybook
1983: A line of geese came over today, 8:05 a.m.

1986: Geese came over this afternoon, one flock about 3:00, another at 5:00.

1987: A cardinal sang at 8:18 a.m. and then was quiet.

1988: Cardinal sang in the middle of the afternoon. First song
sparrow seen today.

1990: After a month of record rainfall, the river is as high as it's been in more than a quarter century. At Sycamore Hole, water is up to the path and into South Glen: maybe five to ten feet above its normal level. Access to the Covered Bridge is closed off. At the mill, the flooding came up to the underside of the footbridge by the dam. The paper says this is the worst flooding since 1975. A year and a half ago, drought with no relief in sight. In the greenhouse, the Shirley tomatoes have reached ten feet - this is the best year ever for tomatoes, no major disease or insect problems, and the yield the strongest ever. The aloe flowers are gone; the last fell after Christmas. A couple of zinnias hold on. The parsley and chard are fresh and tender.

1991: Hyacinths up maybe an inch for several weeks now. One of them has been destroyed by squirrels digging.

1992: To a quilt exhibition in Columbus in the rain, 56 degrees. The theme of the show was gardens. All the comments by the quilters reminded me of Frances Hurie, her sorting and collecting, her perennial garden, the passion to be surrounded by patterns and intricate order, complex design which loses its coherence if approached too closely. Quilting shows a wise awareness; its squares are like days, acts that finally display their meaning or their disarray in time. Home by 4:30; while we were gone, a yellow pansy bloomed in the east garden by the front walk.

1995: At dawn, the huge high-pressure system which had come in after Christmas was moving off, barometer dropping, sky clear except for rose and gold cirrus in the east. Snow has covered the ground for 12 days now. Standing in the yard, I heard a cardinal singing. Birds were active at the feeder, even a huge flicker - the first time I've seen one here in years. Steady increase in clouds through the morning, thickening of cirrus and altocumulus, then the broad dull altostratus.
After lunch, the temperature rose past the freezing mark for the first time in a week, and I went down to the Covered Bridge with Fergus and Buttercup. The snow softened, was easily packed into snowballs. Low afternoon sun filtered through the now thick filter of altostratus, the landscape dappled with shades of grays and blacks and browns, the river frozen in some places especially along the shore, the main channels open and dark. Some leaves unhurt on a few multiflora rose bushes. A lot of sycamore leaves hold along Corey Street, but many of them lie in the snow, brought down by last week's cold. Home in the greenhouse, mother-of-millions still not blooming.

1998: Mother-of-millions budding, still not blooming.

2003: Returning from Goshen, we saw two road kills (raccoons) the only ones in both our trips north and back, 400 miles round trip.

2004: The skunk remains cloistered under the house, its odor vague, pervasive. Traps by the entrances remain untouched. In the greenhouse, the jade tree blossoms are getting old, a few withering. Several small flocks of starlings seen eating crabapples throughout town – and at the new tree in the front yard.

2006: A screech owl was calling this morning when I opened the back door at 6:35. Walking the dog at few hours later, I was surrounded by the songs of robins, starlings, sparrows, cardinals, doves and titmice. I stopped to talk with Peggy, who said she’d never seen so many robins in winter. I felt the same way – I’ve seen overwintering flocks in Yellow Springs for years, but the number of robins that seems different this year.
Thanks to a mild December, snowdrops and a few daffodils are up at least two inches in the yard. Small new hollyhock leaves have opened in the garden. Purple deadnettle has expanded into mounds under the grape arbor. Along the sidewalk, about a dozen pussy willows have cracked a little. By the trellis, honeysuckle berries, which sometimes measure the advance of spring as they disappear, are completely gone.
At the Covered Bridge, I found foot-long growth of feathery hemlock leaves. Some rose hips were soft and squashy; some were brown, brittle, hollow. Osage fruits, some reddish, some still yellow, had been shredded by squirrels or raccoons, lay all about the forest floor.
The deeper I went into the South Glen, the more I noticed the moss around me, and I realized that almost all the stones were green, that the fallen logs were green, that the rotting stumps were green, that the oldest trees overhanging the river were covered with the thickest, most luxurious green moss, fat and bushy, an inch thick in places. Dry streambeds were filled with green rocks and branches. Limestone boulders were dripping with moss, bearded with moss, speckled with sedum and lichens. Everywhere I looked the moss offered islands of summer through the dead leaves, and it drew my vision through vertical pillars of green up into the blue sky.
This Christmas season, I have been reading essays by theologians Thomas Merton and St. Bernard. Both of them obsessively extracted novel and often useful meanings from the events of the Christian liturgical year. St. Bernard was especially gifted of at enumerating things such as the three aspects of Advent or the twelve rungs on the ladder of humility. In his lists, he explored so many unlikely dimensions of a topic, often reaching well beyond the expected to achieve his desired number of insights.
As I walked, I wondered what Bernard would do with all these green Scriptures. He was a man who made tiers of everything, filled in the empty spaces of events, created sequences out of concepts, found allegory wherever he looked. I imagined him without his Jesus and without his Church, helping me to see what really lay before me. I imagined him building the green ladder of this day, finding four transcendent stages in Glen Helen deep winter, six hidden levels in the thickness of mosses, nine miraculous shades of January jade, twelve secret dimensions of the living stones nestled among decaying leaves, fifteen lessons in the enigmatic deer paths that cut carpets of bright chickweed into geometric icons, twenty symbols of inner life growing from the ancient tree stumps, thirty signs of resurrection in the crossed branches of the hoary sycamores, all the meanings I needed flowering from Gaia’s Word.

2007: I heard a cardinal on my walk with Bella this morning, for the first time in months. Crows heard late, about 8:15 this morning; a giant overwintering murder of crows seen along the freeway east to Columbus at about 5:00 this evening.

December 31st
The 365th Day of the Year

Ring out wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty night:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
….
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sunrise/set: 7:57/5:20 Day's Length: 9 hours 23 minutes
Average High/Low: 36/21 Average Temperature: 28
Record High: 67 - 1951 Record Low: - 6 - 1976

Weather
New Year's Eve is usually cloudier than the 30th, bringing overcast conditions seven days in ten. There is a 35 percent chance for rain, ten percent for snow. Today's highs are in the 50s twenty percent of the time, in the 40s twenty-five percent, in the 30s forty-five percent, in the 20s ten percent. Below-zero temperatures on this date are infrequent.

Natural Calendar
Deep winter, the coldest period of the year throughout North America, generally begins tomorrow and lasts until the 28th of January. The outside garden here in Yellow Springs is almost always gone by now. Collards and kale, and well mulched carrots and beets can survive to this point in season, but January’s cold spells eventually take them. Indoors, however, tomato and pepper plants, seeded in middle summer and brought inside before frost, should be continuing to produce fruit in a south window. Basil, parsley, rosemary, thyme and oregano are also doing well.

Daybook
1983: This past December was the third coldest ever, with an average temperature of 21.9.

1988: Crows calling all morning. Small flocks of grackles seen along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road.

1989: The world is not getting warmer here yet. This December was the coldest on record with a 17-degree average. Then today, after two weeks of deep cold, a week of mornings below zero, and six inches of snow, the winds switched to the south. Highs went up to the 40s. When the snow melted, the garlic mustard was just as strong as it had been before this most bitter December in history. A cardinal sang loud and long at 11:41 a.m.

1991: In the Vale: a flock of robins, maybe ten birds wintering over, seen along the path. Honeysuckle berries still hold on for them.

1998: The first snow of the year overnight, maybe half an inch. In the greenhouse, two jade trees have been flowering for a couple of days now. In the garden, temperatures into the teens and single digits have finally killed the chard and broccoli. The pond’s water cress has been locked in ice for almost a week now and seems dead above the water line. The cold has made the mullein, lamb’s ear and feverfew droop. At Springfield, no sign of the great crow gathering.

2001: Large flock of grackles came to Susi’s tree around 11:00 this morning.

2002: A cardinal sang at 8:12 this morning, the temperature outside a gentle 50 degrees

2003: A clear and gentle New Year’s Eve, sky without a cloud, temperatures expected to reach 40. This morning, Jeanie and Dianne saw about 20 more turkey vultures across from the riding center. Then they came across a small flock of robins, their breasts so bright in the rising sun that they appeared pure red. At home, I noticed one starling scouting for a nest by the southeast corner of our eaves. Cardinals were singing as I split wood a little later.

2004: Almost all the snow of the great solstice storm is gone after four days of thaw in the 40s and 50s. The river is high and strong from snowmelt. Downstream, the surface of the water is still frozen.

2006: Rain for New Year’s Eve. In Washington, D.C., spring iris, aconites and snowdrops are in bloom after an especially warm December.

2007: A brief cardinal song (the second so far this month) heard about 10:00 in the alley. Sunny and mild this morning, but rain and snow due tonight as a hard cold front moves in for New Year’s Day.
Strong gusts of wind began about 8:00 this evening; the tin roof rattled and banged.

Contemplation of place brings an awareness not only of time but of self and of the evolution of the self, evoking the simultaneous presence of past and present versions of one’s identity and thereby illuminating the full chronological depth of that identity with a new and poignant clarity.

Kent Ryden, Mapping the Invisible Landscape

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