October 16th
The 289th Day of the Year

If people could only disintegrate like autumn leaves, fret away, dropping their substance like chlorophyll, would not our attitude toward death be different? Suppose we saw ourselves burning like maples in a golden autumn?

Loren Eiseley

Sunrise/set: 7:46/6:55 Day's Length: 11 hours 9 minutes
Average High/Low: 65/44 Average Temperature: 54
Record High: 89 - 1897 Record Low: 28 - 1991

Weather
Today's weather statistics are very similar to those of the 15th, with highs in the 80s coming five percent of the time, 70s thirty percent, 60s thirty-five percent, and 50s thirty percent. The likelihood for clouds and rain increases slightly: showers fall 30 percent of the days; the sun shines 70 percent of the time. Frost strikes 15 percent of the nights, but only half those frosts are hard.

Natural Calendar
The first tier of leaves is down in most years: black walnuts, locusts, buckeyes, box elders, hackberries, pussy willows, ashes, and cottonwoods are usually bare by this date. Pale redbud leaves are falling, some gone, osage half yellow. Blueberry bushes are completely red, burning bush half to all scarlet, vineyards yellow and brown, only a few grapes left. Some ginkgoes are pale golden green, some just a little faded. In the woods, large patches of sky show through the thinning canopy.

Daybook
1982: Crickets grow silent near eleven tonight as the temperature drops toward freezing.

1983: One village ginkgo is pale yellow green, others mixed, and some just a little faded. Many milkweeds are bursting their pods. Peak leaf color is starting, with shagbark hickory, some maples, sweet gum, oak, sassafras, sycamore, ash, and even cottonwood leading. Quickweed still provides a deep green border to the paths. A few lance-leaf and zigzag goldenrod still hold. Asters still common, with chicory and scattered Queen Anne's lace.

1985: Starlings are in full song outside my window at Wilberforce. At South Glen, thimble plants have broken up like old cattails.

1986: Leaves continue to turn very slowly. My aloe plant in the greenhouse is ready to flower.

1987: Mrs. Lawson's maple is completely golden orange, ours more than half bare. Full color throughout the countryside.

1988: Far Hole, river low, 11:00 a.m., windy: One large carp caught. Last week's frost has curled and paled all the box elders and hackberries. Sycamores, wild cherry, dogwoods have been hurt too. The whole landscape here has turned rust and tan, with the blackened goldenrod showing a last few flowers. Almost half the asters gone.

1990: More woolly-bear caterpillars appeared along the road to work today. Leaves still not peak color. Blackbirds cackling in the back trees through the sunny afternoon.

1991: After maybe five days of peak color, leaf-drop suddenly accelerates.

1992: Six to ten inches of snow in Duluth and northern Michigan, first major storm of the season.

1995: First frost this morning. At ten o'clock, I heard tapping on the wood siding beside my office. I went out the front door, came around in back to see who it was: a yellow-bellied sapsucker looking for insects. It's been years since I saw the last one here. To and from work today: the road was filled with orange woolly-bear caterpillars. There have been more this fall on Grinnell Road than I’ve ever seen. Tonight, Peter reported that Massachusetts had been at full maple color a week ago.

1998: Crows were late this morning, 7:23. A warm and sunny day. I found a small brown grass snake on the outside sill of the south wall windows. In the pond, our koi are getting a little slower, more reluctant to rise for food. Water lilies still have 18 leaves, no flowers.

1999: Crows at 7:30 a.m. sharp. Last night: katydids still strong. Full leaf color throughout, fall slow and rich this year. But the cottonwoods are coming down, and some long rows of ash are bare. Lil’s burning bush is bright red. Most all the small white asters in the yard are done. Last year’s mums are still in full bloom; zinnias and snapdragons continue to blossom. A few water lilies still bloom, 23 leaves showing.

2000: At school in Springfield, the oaks are starting quickly, the birch accelerating, one poplar suddenly auburn gold. Red maple almost gone. The Danielson’s maple is a third down, Lil’s maple just starting to turn. The linden in the park is full yellow, the beech on Dayton street red and green.

2003: Mike reports that he heard white-throated sparrows this afternoon. They have returned to the area for winter.

2004: Leaf-fall accelerates in hard wind and about an inch of rain.

2005: Lil’s and the Danielson’s maples hold at just a few leaves turned. Lil’s burning bush: half red. In the south garden, the yellow rose is finally gone, and all the New England asters have faded. Two new purple coneflowers have bloomed, but their petals are not well developed, and their stalks are short. In the east garden, the dahlias have never been stronger. The sedum, though, has gone to seed. The mums have just passed their brightest. In the High-Stafford Street alley, clusters of small violet asters are still blossoming.

2007: Most of the maples are still late-summer green throughout town. In the alley this morning, Mateo’s Jerusalem artichoke leaves were turning beside the yellowing honeysuckle and rose of Sharon. The great ragweed leaves have nearly all disintegrated. Goldenrod leaves are turning, flowers tufted. In the north garden, the New England asters are done, have started to go to soft gray seeds. Silence when I started my walk; then, a few starlings started to whistle about 7:55. Jeanie said she and Chris saw maybe a dozen buzzards in a bare tree along the bike path. Along the way to Wilmington, the maples are still holding off, but some woodlots are in early full turn. At Wilberforce, the ashes and locusts stopped shedding the first week of October, are holding at maybe only a third of their leaves down.

2008: A cool front came through last night, after an oppressive day in the 80s. Today, the sky is sun and gray clouds, wind, leaves falling. In the alley, the apple tree still holds a dozen apples, and Mateo’s violet chicory stand out against the thinning foliage. Along the east fence, the red-gold poison ivy leaves are half down. One blue jay call was all I heard. One red rose bud in the north garden. At the east garden entry, the sedum is still red, still blends with the new bricks. The red viburnum has finally started to drop its leaves. The foliage of Moya’s late hostas is browning quickly.

Autumn is a second spring
When every leaf is a flower.

Albert Camus

October 17th
The 290th Day of the Year

Nothing is foreign; Parts relate to whole
One all-extending, all preserving Soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least
Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast

Alexander Pope

Sunrise/set: 7:47/6:53 Day's Length: 11 hours 6 minutes
Average High/Low: 64/43 Average Temperature: 54
Record High: 86 - 1910 Record Low: 25 - 1977

Weather
There is a 25 percent chance for highs in the 70s today, 50 percent for 60s, another 25 percent for 50s. Skies are totally overcast, and rain is recorded 40 percent of the time. A 15 percent chance exists that lows will reach the 30s, ten percent for a freeze in the 20s.

Natural Calendar
An hour before sunrise, the sky appears the way it will after sundown in early March. The Milky Way and Orion will be moving off to the west; Castor and Pollux of Gemini will be directly overhead. Regulus, the planting star will be the brightest light in the east, and summer’s Arcturus will be just emerging along the eastern tree line.

Daybook
1982: Jacoby: Cattails are breaking up from repeated frosts. Only two asters left blooming by the swamp. Beggarticks stuck to my shirt this afternoon.

1984: Some ginkgoes completely green, some gold, some bare.

1985: Covered Bridge: Half of the osage leaves are down. Dozens of robins migrating south along the river.

1988: The first line of leaves did not fall early; now all the trees seem to be coming in together. Maple in the yard is at its best, bright orange.

1989: Dramatic loss of leaves. Suddenly it's late fall in the middle of October. Afternoons loud with robins and sparrows. Starlings are boisterous in the trees at Caesar Creek. Kingfishers continue their year-round commuting back and forth along the water.

1992: Kalamazoo, Michigan: The northern leaves are brighter, thicker than those in Yellow Springs, deeper reds, more striking oranges and golds, the undergrowth even more brilliant than the upper canopy. Milkweed by the side of the road: none of the pods have opened yet. At home, the last few rose of Sharon bushes (which had grown from seed this spring) are in bloom.

1997: Silver olive trees hold green along the freeway, but they are starting to have speckles of yellow. Christmas cacti by the back door have been budding for at least a week, and the New England asters suddenly all turned brown a few days ago.

1998: Warm and bright today, woolly-bear caterpillars all over the freeways and back roads. Early full leaf color now. Crows at 7:13 a.m. west of town. Cardinal sings at 7:28 a.m. Descending whinny of a screech owl at 7:45 a.m. About a fourth of the south hedge has disappeared, the neighbor’s house showing through. In the pond, arrowhead leaves are all shriveled, its seeds floating in the water.

1999: Katydids last night. And this morning at 4:35, they are still rasping slowly in the 65 degree dark.

2000: Birds thick on the telephone wires south to Wilmington.

2001: Cardinal sings at 7:28 a.m. Witch hazel leaves are turning yellow on Dayton Street. Some sugar maples full color, some half down. Along the road to Columbus, the bare ash and cottonwoods give a sense of late fall. The fencerows are bare except for yellow-green grape foliage. Goldenrod and white boneset seasons are over. Cattail foliage is yellow-brown. At my school window, the red maple is mostly gold, shedding from the top down.

2003: A lush bouquet of zinnias and two perfect yellow roses picked from the north garden.

2004: Crows at 7:20 this morning, the same as two days ago.

2005: Light frost on the back window of the car this morning. Doves and cardinals were calling at 8:00 a.m. The day was warm, and a few katydids called when I walked Bella at 8:30 this evening.

2006: Impatiens and coleus killed by frost between the 10th and the 13th. All butterfly bushes gone. New England asters are ending in the yard. Reddening of the viburnum. Black rose of Sharon seedpods. Moya’s maple full gold and shedding. Hackberry trees are two-thirds down. Peach half down. Astilbe and hosta yellowing. Korean lilac and trumpet creeper ocher. Grape vines very yellow. Bittersweet dark. Lizard’s tail dropping leaves, water willow yellow green. No rose of Sharon flowers. Quince fruits in the pond’s filter. Danielsons’ full, Lil’s a fourth. Oaks gold and russet. Some woodlots mostly green. Knotweed seeds all but a few are gone. Many sweet gums full. In the warmth of this wet evening (63 degrees at 9:30), a few katydids were calling, some crickets.
In the countryside, mum sales come to a close. My classroom ginkgo is ochre. Dogwoods are deep red, full maples, artichokes waning, some locusts only fringed. Windfall apples down everywhere. Burning bush full red. Teasel stark and brown along the freeway. Pale tan of the corn. Landscape past its best in the morning rain, the loss of the ashes creating a significant change. Goldenrod has rusted but has not tufted. Geraniums, a few hosta, a few marigolds still bloom

2007: Another mild day in this mild October. Starlings whistle along the alley. In the yard, the yellow rose has one bud, pink rose full bloom, Shasta daisies with two flowers, one new purple coneflower, half a dozen pink dahlias. A tinge of gold on Lil’s maple and the Danielsons’. The likelihood of frost does not appear in the forecast.

October 18th
The 291st Day of the Year

To live a pure life, to live for the sake of life in total happiness is to adapt oneself completely to the universe, as the trees live.

Graça Aranha

Sunrise/set: 7:48/6:53 Day's Length: 11 hours 5 minutes
Average High/Low: 64/43 Average Temperature: 54
Record High: 86 - 1910 Record Low: 24 - 1976

Weather
There is a 30 percent chance for highs in the 70s today. Sixties come another 30 percent, 50s twenty-five percent, and cold 40s fifteen percent. Clouds cover the earth 40 percent of the time, and rain falls 25 percent. From the 18th through the 20th, for the first time since the middle of April, there is a steady ten percent chance for snow flurries. Frost strikes one night in five on this date.

Natural Calendar
St. Luke's Little Summer, a traditional time in Europe for clear, dry weather starts today and ends the 28th. Something of a parallel exists here on the western side of the Atlantic: October’s average daily precipitation in Yellow Springs declines noticeably towards the end of the month.

Daybook
1982: Wild cucumber fruits are dry and empty. Lone tall bellflower seen: one blossom, no leaves. Not even a hint of yellow on the goldenrod. One bouncing bet open.

1984: Yellow jackets swarm near the pussy willow in the sun, green-bottle flies with them. At some parts of Jacoby, especially in the swamp, the canopy is almost gone. Asters have seeded, zigzag goldenrod done, watercress coming back and filling the shallow streams. Sycamore leaves hide the paths. Many oaks still strong, a third of the slippery elms hang on, Virginia creeper finally fallen. Maples in front of our house and at Mrs. Lawson’s are completely gone, McDaniel's maple full color and falling, Lil's still full green except on top.

1987: Peak leaf color yesterday and today throughout the county. Leaves are coming down more rapidly now. Catchweed is flowering again, watercress and swamp mint growing back. Orange bittersweet is opening, all its foliage fallen. Robins migrating in small clusters. At Grinnell Swamp, most of the sycamores and poplars are gone, spicebush and shagbark hickory yellow.

1988: Full peak leaf color today in Yellow Springs. Then a heavy thunderstorm filled the back yard with leaves.

1992: Peak leaf color continues throughout Ohio, but most of the leaves on the front maple came down yesterday. Seedpods of the hostas are splitting, black seeds ready to fall in a storm. Dave Jensen calls, sees ants swarming in his back yard.

1993: The peak has passed now, the maples falling quickly. Crickets are strong at night, but I haven't heard katydids for a couple of weeks. The birds come to the feeders less these days; are there more seeds about, the full harvest of dried fruits coming in? Only cabbage moths out on the sunnier days. No monarchs for maybe ten days. One black swallowtail last week, one fritillary in the garden a few days ago. Spiderwort finally down to just one or two flowers a day. Pink spider plants continue to flower, and all the annuals still hold. Hard frost came 125 miles north of here close to Toledo on the 10th, but no killing freeze yet here.

1995: The tall ash at the triangle park is complete today, hardly a leaf left. The first phase of leafdrop seems about over, but the maples are still moving towards their best color -- that will be this week. At South Glen, pink smartweed is the last of the late flowers. Here and there some remnants of the pale blue tall bellflowers. Driving to school this afternoon, I wove back and forth trying to miss all the woolly-bear caterpillars. They love these warm, sunny days.

1999: Crows at 7:30. Heavy frost on the roof and on the car windshields, freezing temperatures moving across the central part of the state for the first time this fall. On the television, I see that low temperatures in northern Minnesota are in the 20s, and I think about the family homestead, the church at Gentilly, the graveyard at Crookston, my parents’ graves, and Uncle Bill’s grave in the cold.

2000: This is the peak, the surge in the maple color. Linden full yellow.

2001: Cardinal sings at 7:25 a.m. First Christmas cactus flowers open: one pink, one white. Chicory, Queen Anne’s lace, New England aster, dandelions still blooming around the block.

2002: To Archbold in northern Ohio: Here in Yellow Springs, the first tier of leaves is just aging slightly, the landscape dusky across central Ohio like in an average late September.
As I drive, I see some ashes are peaking, some hickories, and oaks joining in. Scattered maples are red. Cottonwoods have held on, contributing to the sense of early – instead of middle – fall. Most black walnuts have come down. A hundred miles north of home near St. Marys, some woodlots are fully turned, but some cottonwoods nearby are green. Yellow poplars half turned only.
Low, warm sun, cirrus high, wispy, whole tree lines of green. Long backbird flock over the freeway. Haze, gold, gray, and soft. Fields harvested, many plowed. Great faded fields, dry, plowed, dun. The land flattens above Van Wert. I drive past a fox killed on the road beside winter grain all green and glowing, some champagne cottonwoods. In Paulding, some bright green catalpas. Many locusts full yellow green, black beans hanging from them. Lots of yellow hickory. Some red oaks turning, definitely twice the color in northern Ohio as in Yellow Springs.
Returning home, I see the line between early fall and middle fall lies exactly between VanWert and Piqua.

2003: The north hackberry’s foliage is withered but still attached; the south hackberry, a younger tree, is bare. Janet’s redbud is yellow, mottled, ready to fall. The New England asters are declining quickly. I heard robins chirping in the honeysuckles this morning, starlings cackling, whistling, flocking in the woods near Greg’s house.

2005: Walking Bella along the alley at 7:45 this morning: Doves calling, cardinals singing, sparrows chattering. Behind Mateo’s property, the small white asters have all gone to seed. The Jerusalem artichoke leaves are mottled, their flower petals gone. On the road to Wilmington, maples are at early peak, many ashes still holding. Four flocks of starlings seen spiraling in sync across the sky. At school, my ash tree is completely bare.

2006: Crickets sing softly just before dawn. At Wilberforce, the small maples are full red, the larger maples bare. One ginkgo tree, the one by my classroom, is full ochre. The ginkgo by my window is still strong green. At home, the Danielsons’ maple is full, Lil’s is reaching almost half, and Mrs. Timberlake’s is just starting.

2007: The road to Wilmington is in early full color. The ashes and locusts at Wilberforce hold at close to half fallen, and it seems the ashes in the country are holding partially as well. Many maples are bright orange and red, but Lil’s maple is just a little ochre, and the Danielsons’ is still deep green. One of my our ash trees along High Street is almost down; the other at the southeast corner of the lot is full, deep, dirty gold. In the alley this morning, about fifteen starlings were sitting in Don’s black walnut tree, and two flocks of starlings seen soaring near the community college. Roadside chicory is dying back, but some plants are still flowering. The mild October continues, the high today in the upper 70s.

2008: Drove through John Bryant Park this afternoon: many high trees gone, redbuds, sweet gum, sycamore, yellow poplar, sugar maples at full color – mostly yellows and oranges. Some bright Osage leaves, some paling honeysuckle. The alley maple is half shed, and the secret maple is golden. Crows this morning at 7:30 and even one cardinal call.

October 19th
The 292nd Day of the Year

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Dylan Thomas

Sunrise/set: 7:49/6:50 Day's Length: 11 hours 1 minute
Average High/Low: 63/42 Average Temperature: 53
Record High: 84 - 1910 Record Low: 23 - 1992

Weather
Today is another pivot day on the way to winter: For the first time since April 18th, there is a five percent chance for high temperatures only in the 30s. Another landmark: Chances for low temperatures in the 30s jumps to above 50 percent. Highs are in the 70s thirty percent of the afternoons, in the 60s twenty-five percent, in the 50s thirty percent, in the 40s ten percent. Showers and overcast skies can be expected one day in three; flurries occur just once in a decade.

Natural Calendar
The sugar beet harvest begins near this date all across the northern states at the same time that grape harvest is done along Lake Erie. The third and final cutting of alfalfa is complete throughout Ohio. Winter wheat and winter rye have been seeded. Soil temperatures fall into the middle 50s. Gardeners divide peonies, lilies, and iris, then plant crocus, daffodils, tulips, snowdrops, and aconites.

Daybook
1983: Wild asparagus is yellowing by the roadsides. At the mill, buzzards are sitting on the same sycamore as last October 20th, huge flock of about 50 birds. Last milkweed beetle seen. Fresh mint, six inches tall. The woods is quiet at first; then up the hill, suddenly the trees come alive with the sound of robins. They are in the high branches, loud like starlings, hundreds of them. A few minutes later, they're gone. At night, the crickets are still strong.

1984: Sweet gum and redbuds falling, canopy disappearing. Peak color is past.

1985: All-day rain punctuates the end of major leaf color.

1986: Covered Bridge: Robins, bobwhites, and blackbirds calling. Sycamores gold all along the river, geese flying back and forth, a great blue heron gliding up river, skunk cabbage three inches high for March, cottonwood leaves spiraling down like birds, frost melting off the trees like rain. At the edge of the woods, a whole field full of violets covered with frost! Although leaf color is slow to change this year, the late wildflowers have come and gone exactly on schedule. Tonight, only one cricket heard as I walked the dog.

1987: Color starting to turn past its peak, dramatic thinning of the leaves.

1988: Peak color pivot seems to be today.

1989: Record five-inch snowfall in Dayton today.

1990: To Wisconsin: Sunny and 35 degrees, departing Yellow Springs at 8:00 a.m. sharp, full leaf color, cornfields brown and uncut, barometer steady, cardinal singing, flock of crows going over, winter wheat up and fields green in places, so many trees still green.
A low bank of clouds lying over the Great Miami river valley like a range of hills or bluffs. All the goldenrod is gone along the highway, milkweed standing stark and disheveled, soybean fields rich orange, scattered Queen Anne's lace.
Better leaf color seen near Indianapolis, one patch of asters at Urbana – one in 265 miles, hundreds of yards of red burning bush, harvest of corn and soybeans occasionally complete, spots of helianthus, one woolly bear caterpillar above El Paso, Illinois, crogn vetch bright green, more asters near Rockford, leaves holding on the trees north into Madison below the vast mare’s tails sweeping up from the northwest.

1992: Most ginkgo leaves fall today after frost.

1997: Crows pass over at 7:30 a.m., a little better than twenty minutes before sunrise. Last night I went into the shrubbery along the east side of the yard looking for Buttercup; I came out covered with beggartick burs.

1998: Huge flock of crows comes over the house at 7:15 a.m.

1999: Yesterday Barbara Pierce showed me her praying mantis, which lived in her bushes through the summer. Now, she said, he was starting to fail, and when she introduced him to me, he was on his side, wedged between leaves. She says he usually makes a sound “kind of like a cricket,” and the same one has been there at least since June. They come back year after year, she says.

2000: Peak color Yellow Springs to Wilmington. The landscape solid gold in the low evening sun.

2001: Portland, Oregon: Trees at least ten days behind Ohio. Honey locusts, white birches, and a few ash are just starting to peak. Maples and aspens are yellowing, but no trees are bare. Burning bush full red. California poppies seen in full bloom by the roadsides. Some periwinkle and yarrow open too.

2003: East to Athens, returning through southern Ohio along the Appalachian Highway: Leaf color was inconsistent throughout. The fall of the first tier of leaves had left the tree line stark in places. In other locations, especially in the east, the hills were a soft yellow, orange, and gold, and many wood lots were at their center of leaf-turn. Several woolly-bear caterpillars seen, a few sulfur butterflies, one painted lady. The bodies of many young raccoons seen along the highway; the raccoons seem especially susceptible to being run over these middle-autumn nights.

2005: Hurricane Wilma spins in the Caribbean, has hit Jamaica and is heading toward Florida. This morning it had the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded for that area. The 2005 hurricane season is now tied with the 1937 seasons for number of named storms.

2006: Starlings seen in Don’s tree this morning. Killdeer seen at school in Wilmington. So many maples peaking, my maple in the alley full gold. A few tall coneflowers bloom by the fence. At Wilberforce, my classroom ginkgo is full gold. A few loud, slow katydids sang tonight, maybe their last songs of the year.

2007: Leaf color is reaching its peak along the freeway, many bright ashes holding everywhere, contributing to one of the best October colorations I can remember. Lil’s burning bush is tinged with red. The bittersweet vine at the corner of High and Limestone is holding its leaves, its berries pale orange.

2008: First frost this morning, many coleus burned, but most plants did well. A black and orange woolly bear caterpillar was exploring the front porch when I went out to check the mail. A dozen daffodils planted by the west redbuds this afternoon.

October 20th
The 293rd Day of the Year

The weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural history.

Gilbert White

Sunrise/set: 7:50/6:49 Day's Length: 10 hours 59 minutes
Average High/Low: 63/42 Average Temperature: 52
Record High: 84 - 1953 Record Low: 24 - 1952

Weather
Today is often one of the cooler days of October, with a 40 percent chance of overcast skies, and a 30 percent chance for rain or light snow. Highs climb above 70 only five percent of the time (the first time odds for heat have been so low since April 11th. Most afternoons reach the 60s (a 40 percent chance) or the 50s (there’s a 45 percent chance or that). Also: a five percent chance for just 30s. A light frost strikes most gardens five years in ten, the highest likelihood so far this fall.

Natural Calendar
The day's length falls below eleven hours for the first time since February 21st. Peak leaf coloring is just beginning throughout the middle and southern Appalachians, but in the lower Midwest, the best of middle fall is over. Wild asparagus yellows by the roadsides. The final sedum blossoms are closing for the year. Wild cucumber fruits are dry and empty. Hosta seedpods crack, revealing their black contents.
As foliage thins, eastern phoebes, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, catbirds, and house wrens depart. The last turkey vultures circle Glen Helen. Vast flocks of robins accelerate their passage through the woods, chattering, whinnying, moving south through the high trees along the river valley. Starlings cackle and whistle in the osage orange. The last cabbage moths look for cabbages. The last daddy-longlegs hunt in the flower beds. At night, sluggish crickets fill in for the silent katydids.

Daybook
1982: To this point fall came gently, with a cool spell the second week of August, then the ragweed and goldenrod, a few trees with patches of yellow, the black walnuts thinning, then buckeyes. Now, everything is poised for violent change. Another week, one more heavy frost, a storm, and fall will be over. Buzzards gathering at the bend of the river past the mill.

1983: From scadtered notes: Peak of fall leaf coloring occurred today in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983.

1986: Crickets continue singing in the warmer afternoons. Whip-poor-will calls are common.

1987: Major leaf fall in the last two days. Peak is gone. My maples hold just a fourth of their leaves. Pussy willow foliage coming down, some osage. Cherry mostly gone. Magnolias yellow quickly. Rapid early turning of ginkgoes. Sweet gum thins quickly. Catalpas mostly gone. Half the trees are bare along the road to Wilberforce. Winter wheat sprouting.

1991: Uncle Bill calls from Gentilly, Minnesota: Ground white with the first snowfall of the season.

1992: Most all the ginkgoes at Wilberforce fell yesterday and the day before. Frost brought them down in 1988 too. Ashes are bare, but they held on late. Now the locusts follow. Lil's maple has turned completely - that's early for her tree. Snow bursts this morning. By late afternoon, peak leaf fullness is gone, the village is on the other side of middle autumn. On the way to Springfield, 6:45 p.m., I saw a long line of blackbirds flying southeast, both ends of the flock lost in the distance.

1995: The witch hazel on Dayton Street, leaves yellow and two-thirds gone, bloomed overnight. Peak leaf color in the maples now. As I drive north to Chicago in the wind and rain: The tree line is dull, but not empty. With ashes and cottonwoods finished, the color depends on the quantity of maples or oaks in a grove. In northern Indiana, the number of oaks seems to increase, bringing more dark reds and browns to the landscape. Every 30 or 40 miles a flock of starlings or blackbirds rises far in front of the car, swoops and dives with the wind.

1997: The moon is bright this morning and has been for the past several mornings at the end of the third quarter moon.

1998: To Wisconsin: starting from the height of leaf color in Yellow Springs, I drive west and north. At 8:45 a.m., not a cloud in sight. The landscape shines. Oaks and sweet gum turning gold, ashes maroon, hickories golden green, ash trees red. Tarnished grape leaves, scarlet poison ivy, yellow locusts and redbuds, blushing spicebush. Tattered box elders, orange maples. Honeysuckles untouched by fall, and some white oaks, silver maples also summer green. Some very late goldenrod flowering. Cattail leaves browning, last year’s cattail remnants ghostly and puffy, heads swollen and broken. Black teasel. Purple barberry bushes. Scattered crows, a few last red-winged blackbirds. At Richmond, 60 miles west of Yellow Springs: one buzzard.
At 92 miles from home, cirrus wisps appear in the south. Tightly cut soy fields, gray beige, low stubble. Corn all brown, much harvested, color of old wheat. Primrose seen past Indianapolis. Queen Anne’s lace then occasionally, peak leaf color staying through western Indiana. Deep blue farm ponds reflect the sky.
At a rest stop near Danville, Illinois, one burning bush is completely red. At 1:00 p.m., the sky remains clear, except now there is a long band of altostratus and cirrostratus in the far southern horizon. Barometer continues high.
A patch of wild sunflowers near Urbana, sow thistles too, and a few cut-over goldenrod. Blue chicory past Mahomet, and scattered New England asters near Bloomington. At 2:30 p.m., the cirrus have moved overhead. The west is hazy with cirrostratus.
Full harvest in progress across northern Illinois. Now flocks of starlings every 40 miles or so. Scattered asters seen about parallel with Chicago. Three deer killed on the road near Rockford, rutting season here. Above the Illinois border, more leaves are down, the tree line much more brown, duller. Late color here, maybe a week from Yellow Springs.
Now cirrus are dominant in the sky. Geese on Wisconsin ponds. White clover seen at Beloit. Milkweeds more open and tattered here than in Ohio. The land so drab approaching Madison. Thickening clouds by sundown, altocumulus, altostratus. Barometer dropping.

1999: Drive through Xenia and Wilberforce. My ash is completely bare, my ginkgoes no longer rich deep green. In the parking lot, most of the trees are down. Maple foliage maybe a fourth down, and throughout the drive in the countryside, the peak of leaf color has passed. The mornings keep bringing light frost on the roof and on the car windows, but no plants have been hurt so far.

2000: Burning bush shedding. Ginkgo and the pink-flowered quince are half yellow, linden a third to a half down.

2002: Cardinal sings at 7:30 a.m. A flock of robins pass through the yard a little after 8:00. Blackbirds fill the back locust trees at 10:30.

2004: Cardinal heard at 7:35 this foggy morning. In the countryside, maples hold their color. Tonight at home, a few sluggish katydids, a few whistling crickets, the air soft and damp, temperature mild.

2005: Wilberforce: Ashes and locusts shedding heavily here. One ginkgo is very pale. Deep red orange maples here and there throughout the campus.

2006: A good-sized camel cricket was in the bathtub when I got up this morning.

2007: The alley sugar maple is full yellow, two maples on the corner of High and Limestone full color – one bright orange, the other bright gold. Our ashes still holding gold. Lil’s maple and the Danielson’s have started to develop a few autumn patches. Starlings whistling. One cabbage butterfly.

2008: A second frost this morning, more coleus hurt. Driving to Beavercreek, I saw the ashes shedding, maples still full dusky color. Tonight, a few katydids were calling, in spite of two cold nights.

October 21st
The 294th Day of the Year

Up the slope, the wind:
asters bend, the brown grass trembles,
air is chill.

August Derleth

Sunrise/set: 7:52/6:47 Day's Length: 10 hours 55 minutes
Average High/Low: 62/42 Average Temperature: 52
Record High: 85 - 1953 Record Low: 23 - 1974

Weather
Today and the 12th are the two October days most likely to bring clouds: 45 percent of the days are completely overcast, 30 percent carry rain. One in ten afternoons has a high above 80, twenty-five percent of the days are in the 70s, twenty-five percent in the 60s, twenty percent in the 50s, twenty percent in the 40s. Frost comes one morning in five, lows in the 20s one morning in 20.

Natural Calendar
One of the invasive species that grows throughout our village is the wintercreeper vine, or euonymus fortunei. An Asian native brought to the United States one hundred years ago, it has probably thrived in our habitat for at least half a century. Wintercreeper has dark green, oval leaves and often climbs local trees and outbuildings. It keeps its foliage and its color even through the most bitter Januarys.
Like all perennials, this euonymus has a growth cycle that fills twelve months. Most of its phases are easily observed, and it is a steady companion with which to follow the path of the Yellow Springs year. At the end of October, the vine shows off white or pale pink fruit that formed in early August. In the first weeks of November, the fruit capsules will begin to break open, revealing their orange seeds just as ginkgo and white mulberry trees lose their leaves.
When honeysuckle and forsythia foliage finally gives way by the middle of December, the wintercreeper berries start to break away from their hulls, continuing to fall to the ground, joining the decaying Osage fruits to measure out the first three months of the year. Then, when snowdrops and aconites flower in our dooryards, when pussy willows are full of pollen and maple seeds sprout in the garden, the euonymus vines put on new growth, and the seed capsules themselves come down.
By the middle of April, when large-flowered trilliums cover the Glen floor, the fresh wintercreeper leaves have almost reached full size, and throughout the spring and early summer, their tiny buds gradually take shape, clearly visible when lilies blossom in village gardens. At the end of July, the buds break out in clusters of five-petaled yellow-green flowers that last until the middle of August. Then they form their white capsules that open when all the maple leaves are gone, displaying once again their orange seeds that slowly fall like hourglass sand to fill the cup of spring.

Daybook
1982: Mill Habitat: I'd gone for a walk expecting to find the end of everything. Instead the Glen was full of robins chirping and fluttering: I'd never seen the woods so alive. Buzzards, maybe fifty or sixty of them, uneasy when they saw me, rose and settled on one sycamore then another, their reflections in the water like huge berries on the branches.

1983: Mill Habitat: Parsnips blooming here, and some red clover and small white asters. A small flock of robins at the river bank, and then further up stream, the woods full of them. And I counted 60 buzzards perched in a sycamore tree at the bend of the river. In the bottomland, poison hemlock was growing back, with chickweed and sedum. One pepper cress was blooming as though spring were going to arrive in a few weeks.

1984: Redbud leaves falling, some gone, catalpas faded but most are holding, osage half yellow, some coming down.

1985: A spring peppercress found blooming at the mill.

1986: 5:39 p.m., 70 degrees, barometer dropping, moon in Taurus, the sky clear. Buzzards circling. A big carp caught on homemade doughballs, fish biting as fast as I could cast.

1988: Rain hurrying the leaf fall. High Street maples coming down more heavily now, and the box elders, and the osage orange in the back yard.

1990: Wisconsin to Yellow Springs: As I drove, I saw flocks of blackbirds every hour or so, one flock of seagulls. Under overcast skies and with a north tail wind, the grass seems wintry to me, the trees duller and thinner than just two days ago when I drove in the sun, pushed north by a south wind. Late autumn came overnight, the cornfields gray, the underside of the remaining leaves up in the wind, hiding the brighter colors. But the wheat glows in the rain. Some crown vetch flowers seen near Richmond, Indiana, a patch of yellow primrose, too.

1992: Red mulberry, knotweed, and tree of heaven leaves blackened from a hard freeze. Dave Jensen calls, still finding glowworms by the side of the road, in the grass along the edge of the Vale. He also reported swarming of some kind of insects, small, dark.

1993: Rain yesterday, then wind started about nine o'clock at night, blew hard through this morning. Clearing now, with maybe half of the maples gone, all the ash, locust, box elders. Autumn came so slowly through the first part of the month. The trees browned so subtly in the sun. Suddenly the peak came, and then the wind last night, and everything collapsed.

1994: The last of the stonecrop is gone now in the east garden, passed its peak more than a week ago.

1995: With the pieces of autumn come moods, motifs that are tied to the shapes and the smells around me. I feel a need to close and to let go, to accept old failures. I'm ready for new adventures, feel a tensing of my body for new encounters, for things about to happen now that the leaves are almost down. Whitman says that landscape is language. Seasons are language, too, each day with its own syntax, its own vocabulary.

1999: Robins heard in town for the first time in quite a while this afternoon. In the yard, the south hedge is holding; even though the black walnut is gone, the red mulberries, the poplar, lilacs and rose of Sharon are still mostly green. The honeysuckle hedge: maybe a third thinned, revealing the street along the north line. Geese seen flying near the bright orange sunset.

2002: Blackbirds cackling in the back yard trees at 11:00 a.m. Cardinals sing off and on through the morning. To Wilmington, 30 miles south of Yellow Springs, in the afternoon: Some New England asters still open, peak ash color in places. At Wilberforce, my ginkgo is pale, my ash three-fourths shed. In the parking lot, all the ashes are down, the locusts almost bare, maples full color, the landscape maybe at the end of the first week of October.

2003: Turkey vultures seen through the day on my drives to Washington Court House and Dayton. More than a dozen buzzards were perched on a sycamore roost near the covered bridge at 10:30 a.m.

2004: Blackbirds flying over north of town, starlings clucking in the back trees. The maples hold in the rain, the Danielson’s tree is full gold and starting to shed. Lil’s maple is a pale gold, patches of summer green still showing through. The secret maple is about half gone. The town settles into the end of middle autumn, quiet in the fog and mist, leaves bright on the soft, wet earth.

2005: To Cincinnati to look for another wood stove. Peak leaf color throughout the area, many ashes holding on and blending with the bright maples, bright in spite of the steady rain. Danielson’s maple has turned a dusky gold over the last day or two. Lil’s maple has one corner half yellow. The secret maple is just barely starting.

2007: Peak leaf color throughout the area, ashes and hickories holding on and complementing the maples. The secret maple is mostly gold. Lil’s and the Danielson’s only just starting in patches. Two monarch butterflies seen today in the garden, one in the morning, one late in the afternoon. A yellow tea rose opened a day or so ago, is huge and brilliant.

2008: On the way to Wilmington this morning, I saw a huge flock of vultures circling the river near Old Town. On the way home: a sizeable flock of starlings swooped and played in the wind, wide, graceful group acrobatics. In the yard, I brought in the jade tree and the two angel-wing begonias: lows in the 20s tonight. Two autumn violets were blooming in the north garden.

In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,
In music and the sweet unconscious tone
Of animals, and voices which are human,
Meant to express some feelings of their own;
In the soft motions and rare smiles of woman,
In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,
Or dying in the autumn, I the most
Adore thee present or lament thee lost.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

October 22nd
The 295th Day of the Year

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yield.

Walter Raleigh

Sunrise/set: 7:53/6:46 Day's Length: 10 hours 53 minutes Average High/Low: 62/41 Average Temperature: 52
Record High: 82 - 1920 Record Low: 25 - 1887

Weather
Today is the last day of the year on which there is a ten percent chance of a high in the 80s. From now on, temperatures remain below that mark at least until the first week of April. Highs come into the 70s fifteen percent of the days, into the 60s twenty-five percent, into the 50s forty-five percent, and into the 40s five percent. Chances for rain are 40 percent; overcast conditions occur four to five days in a decade. Frost strikes one morning in five.

The Week Ahead
Highs are usually in the 50s or 60s, with the odds for 70s near one in five. The danger of frost remains similar to that of he 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 for 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 for sun are about 70 percent throughout the period, and some of the driest October days are the 26th, 28th, and 29th (each having just a fifteen percent chance for 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 Saints Day is usually unpleasant.

Natural Calendar
This is the last week of the middle fall in Greene County.
The second tier of leaves, consisting mostly of the early maples, is coming down (in the first tier were the ashes and box elders, locusts and buckeyes). Now oaks, osage, white mulberries, magnolias, ginkgoes, and the late sugar maples move quickly towards full color and leaf drop. Everything is poised on the edge of winter.

Daybook
1983: Mill habitat: Robins past the mill, this time on the ground and quiet until I walked through. Twenty buzzards counted on the roost at the bend of the river. Parsnips in bloom, yarrow and winter cress growing back. Thin and broad-leaved zigzag goldenrod still blooming. At home, a violet in the grass. Along the north hedge, peach leaves green but falling.

1984: Mill habitat: Robins found about 200 yards beyond the river bend, buzzards also in a different sycamore, large flocks swarming before heading south. In the rain, the grass was yellow green, the woods like it seemed in April, red leaves like new flowers, and the faded elms glowing like the fresh leaves of spring. In town, the maples are in full decline, yellow poplars and redbuds all gone.

1986: Leaves holding late this year, front maple full yellow, just a third dropped, Mrs. Lawson's maple only half turned.

1989: Dahlia bulbs dug, tulips and daffodils and lilies planted.

1990: Through the countryside, colors are intensifying, coming to a head about a week later than last year. Lil's maple about a fourth turned. Mrs. Lawson's is deep and fragile, as are mine. A Canadian thistle seen blooming at Wilberforce. A sundrop primrose flowering along Grinnell Road.

1993: Dozens of black woolly-bear caterpillars crossing Grinnell and Route 68 today, the only day in the year they've been so restless.

1994: A monarch butterfly came to the zinnias today, the last of the year?

1995: Coming back to Yellow Springs from Chicago, I can see little change in the leafturn. Along the freeways in northern Illinois, goldenrod is still in bloom, sunflowers still open. But here at home, almost everything is gone.

1999: The south hedge suddenly rusts and sheds quickly, my privacy dropping away all at once.

2000: Crows at 7:34 a.m., clear, quite dark. In the garden, the last veronica and phlox die back, gaura still in bloom. On the road to Hillsboro, I found the peak of leaf color to be well past. At home, the Danielson’s maple was three-fourths down, but Lil’s was still at its best. The south hedge around the house is slowly collapsing, revealing the neighbors.

2001: The red Christmas cactus is about a third open.

2002: Blackbirds in the back trees for several hours in the late morning.

2003: The landscape is dull on the way to Wilmington, even though so many of the maples and oaks still hold most of their foliage.

2004: A cardinal was singing when I walked out the front door this morning at 7:35. The Danielson’s maple is deep orange gold, aging but still holding. Lil’s tree is a rich new gold. At South Glen, 9:00 a.m., small cups of gossamer, shining with dew, hang to the tips of the black wingstem, are common throughout the cut field grass. Robins are passing south along the east ridge. Osage leaves are bright yellow (fat green fruit all over the ground); sycamore leaves are rust-brown-gold. In one dark patch of wingstem stalks, a few pale blue tall bellflowers were blooming. In one corner of the pasture, wild lettuce plants, leaves shriveled, displayed dozens of prominent white seed heads, each maybe an inch and a half in diameter. When I touched the heads, they dissolved between my fingers. This afternoon, I planted late-spring tulips in the northeast garden around the hydrangea.

2006: A few late violet flowers on fall hostas seen today.

2007: Venus shining huge in the deep blue, predawn east. A cardinal sang at 7:35 as I walked Bella in the alley. As Jean and I drove to Dayton about 7:50 this morning, we saw a long flock of blackbirds high above the freeway. The flock began at the northern horizon and continued across the clear sky into the southern horizon.

2008: Crows at 7:50 this morning. Low of 28, three degrees from the record. The alley maple, the High-Limestone Street maples, and Don’s black walnut are almost bare. Don’s maple full color. Lil’s maple hardly started, Danielsons’ holding at a third. Caladium bulbs taken inside this afternoon, Shasta daisies transplanted to prepare for lily tree bulbs.

October 23rd
The 296th Day of the Year

Along roadsides, in abandoned pastures, on open hillsides, hues had turned somber. The flowers of fall lacked the brilliance and freshness of their spring predecessors.... One saw lavender and old lace: the violet-purple of New England Asters alongside the faded white of Umbellate Asters. Queen Anne's Lace had lost its virginal whiteness and gone to seed. In seeming paradox, the once brilliant goldenrod appeared tarnished. Even the textures of plants were those of the aged. Vegetation which before had been soft, smooth, and supple had become rough, coarse and brittle.

Vincent G. Dethier

Sunrise/set: 7:54/6:45 Day's Length: 10 hours 51 minutes
Average High/Low: 61/41 Average Temperature: 51
Record High: 84 - 1947 Record Low: 25 - 1982

Weather
Another step towards winter: from now on, the chances for high below 50 degrees jump to 30 percent for the first time since April 9th. But afternoons still warm to the 70s twenty-five percent of the time, to the 60s thirty percent, to the 50s fifteen percent. Skies are overcast, and rain comes four times in a decade on this day. Frost occurs 20 percent of the mornings.

Natural Calendar
Above the far tree line due south, October's Fomalhaut outshines all the other stars before midnight. To the west, Hercules is setting behind the Corona Borealis. The Pleiades precede Orion in the east. Pegasus and the Great Square are overhead in the Milky Way. Cygnus, the Northern Cross, follows summer's Vega south.

Daybook
1982: King Street still looks like September, mostly green. Mulberry trees are keeping their summer color.

1985: A few buzzards, but no robins migrating by the river. Mulberry leaves turning yellow.

1986: Mrs. Lawson's maple turned to full color in only one day.

1987: Mrs. Lawson's maple is completely down. The ginkgo by my window is yellow green, has most of its leaves. Pussy willow thinned by half, tree of heaven gone. Now the tree line is dull all the way to Wilberforce. Flocks of starlings still cackle in the trees outside the ginkgo window.

1988: Walk at Covered Bridge, rain, 50 degrees, most of the leaves fallen here, no bird songs at all, not a robin. The tree line black and brown, bark and branches wet and sharp against the sky. Just one or two crickets. In Yellow Springs, maples hold, but leaves come down heavily in the rain. The peak has turned, but middle fall isn't over yet. Mrs. Lawson's maple holds with half its leaves, as does my frond maple. Behind the house, the pussy willow, cherry, and apple have most all their leaves. They turn tan, yellow, orange slowly, speckled with decay.
Late morning, with the fire behind me in the stove, rain on the windows, purple, white, gold mums through the greenhouse wall, against old Virginia creeper, mulberry, maple, raspberry leaves, I sit with myself in private society, as hunter-gatherer, leisurely, self-confidently watching from this cave. I could live completely in this present, give freely or not at all, focus tightly, perfectly, on the leaves and rain.

1990: Only an occasional cricket tonight, clear, 40 degrees. Leaves continue at peak, hold strong.

1991: Pear trees are nearly half red, early like the maples were.

1992: Cardinal at 6:30 this morning, promise of spring. South Glen: Osage fruits on the ground and hanging from the branches, leaves blackened by the frost. A few scattered white asters, all the others seem to be through. Robins migrating along the river, like in all the years before. A monarch butterfly leisurely flies up over the gray tufted goldenrod. Pokeweed berries dark and soft, some withering, lanky broken stalks gold and rust like love vine.

1993: Walking Buttercup at South Glen, clear skies, 55 degrees: Just off the road, on the way to Sycamore Hole, the sound of robins migrating, steady whinnies from up the hill and across the river. Most of the high canopy is gone now: chinquapins, ash, hickory, locust, maples, sycamores. Most of the asters are well past their prime, and the zigzag is almost through. Occasional dandelions brighten the field (one of Jean's students picked a bouquet of them last week from the golf course). Blackberry leaves are deep red, goldenrod heads have become gray and puffy, ironweed seeds have turned a palomino tan. The half moon is rising through the black wingstem.

1995: It is customary to associate history with the past. Natural history, on the other hand, has less to do with what has happened than with what is happening now. The autumn violets are here again on the same day they appeared fifty or a hundred years ago.

1997: Vultures circling over the North Glen this afternoon as I came home from work. Definitive killing frosts yesterday morning and this morning.

2000: At school in Springfield, the ginkgoes, English oak, chestnut, black oak, sweet gum all full color and shedding. The tall, narrow maple is bare now.

2002: A cardinal sang before dawn this morning. Lil’s maple is just starting, her burning bush half red. On the green at Antioch, fall dandelions are common. To Wilmington: Close to full leaf color in many places, the first and second tier of trees coming to their peak together. Woolly-bear caterpillars are out in the sun crossing the highways.

2003: My ginkgo at school is still a solid green. One ginkgo beside it, however, turned yellow more than a week ago; now, it’s almost bare.

2004: The secret maple, the northeast maple and Mrs. Lawson’s maple all came down yesterday. The Korean lilac leaves are yellow green, the goosefoot leaves a deep red. Mexican sunflowers, Russian sage, the purple hollyhocks, and the small, late-seeded zinnias still bloom. Blackbirds suddenly fill the trees at 12:20 this afternoon.

2006: Cold and gray with flurries this morning, and one camel cricket in the bathtub. Lil’s tree and the secret maple are full now. Danielsons’ maple half shed, Moya’s maple mostly gone. The mother tree of heaven is losing foliage, but the tree of heaven hedge along the south border is holding green. Throughout town, major maple leafdrop underway. Mateo’s Jerusalem artichokes have finished blooming.

2007: A mild all-day rain dulled the leaf color, but peak foliage stayed on quite well. At Wilberforce, the maroon ashes continue at about a third, and the maples are becoming brilliant orange and red-orange. The ginkgoes are all summer green. When I drove into the river valley below Wilberforce this morning, I came on a flock of wild turkeys feeding in the grass by the side of the road, close to a dozen birds.

2008: A very quiet morning. Only eight apples left on the alley apple tree. Sun throughout the day. The landscape holds at full color, but pale. Lil’s tree is still not turning, but her burning bush is red all across the top half. The Danielsons’ maple is approaching its best. The viburnum at the north side of the house has lost about half of its leaves. Jeanie put in the tree lilies on either side of the trellis this afternoon. Tonight, Venus in the far west, Jupiter approaching from the south, two very slow katydids calling near the park after dark.

 

October 24th
The 297th Day of the Year

As the afternoons grow shorter, and the early evening drives us home to complete our chores, we are reminded of the shortness of life, and become more pensive, at least in this twilight of the year. We are prompted to make haste and finish our work before the night comes.

Henry David Thoreau

Sunrise/set: 7:55/6:43 Day's Length: 10 hours 48 minutes
Average High/Low: 61/41 Average Temperature: 51
Record High: 82 - 1899 Record Low: 23 - 1981

Weather
Today’s chances for precipitation: 25 percent. Highs are in the 70s twenty-five percent of the years, in the 60s forty percent, in the 50s fifteen percent, in the 40s fifteen percent, in the 30s five percent. Sixty percent of the days are clear to partly cloudy. Light frost occurs one morning in three or four.

Natural Calendar
Today is Cross Quarter Day, the midpoint between fall equinox and winter solstice. Cattails begin to break apart this week. The final giant jimson weed opens in the cornfields. The last raspberries of the year redden in the low October sun. Morning fog becomes more common. Harvest continues all around the Midwest, with about half of the corn and three-fourths of the soybeans cut. Apple orchards have been picked clean of fruit. Throughout the cranberry region of the northern states, most of the berries have been brought in from the bogs.

Daybook
1984: Grinnell habitat, clear, 58 degrees: Dogwoods pink, red, and pale green. Small flock of robins in the upper undergrowth, but not swarming through the high canopy. No flowers blooming. Some crickets strong. Buzzards circling, several dozen perching at their roost at the river bend.

1986: Full leaf color now: ashes and maples turn together, red and gold. Full leaf spectrum, with the major leaf drop starting.

1987: South Glen: Robins passing through the honeysuckles, starlings whistling in the osage, crickets chanting. Some smartweed still blooming.

1989: Covered Bridge: Leaves almost gone now, red rosehips standing out, only a few asters along the path. Waterleaf, grown back luxuriant, dominant across the woods floor. Crickets – constant song. All the zigzag goldenrod gone, scattered foliage of lizard’s tail along the river bank, an autumn violet in the shade, several more in the open field, a flock of robins at Far Hole, sycamore leaves tumbling downstream in the clear water, yellow osage fruits spread over the ground, crows boisterous, Canadian thistles coming back, fresh nettle growing – a good time for greens. At my second fishing hole, a flock of migrating robins fluttered back and forth, seemed lost, separated, disoriented, a pair of male cardinals were sparring near them. Water striders in a pool, bright red barberries seen through the brush.

1993: Cardinal song strong all day, a piece of second spring. One golden cabbage moth at the roses, the only butterfly seen in what seems like weeks.

1994: This afternoon about five o'clock, I stopped with Buttercup at Grinnell Pond below the railroad tracks. A few yards into the woods, I startled robins, and they flew off to the east into the gorge. Further down the hill, more robins, and then I could see it was a vast flock passing through, fluttering, chattering, whinnying, moving south through the high trees along the river valley.

1997: Standing in the back yard at dawn, I could only hear one cricket over in the north hedge. Downtown at eight o’clock, sparrows were loud in the pear trees. Jean says she hasn’t heard them for a long time. Then later, Neysa said she hadn’t heard them from her apartment since maybe the middle of summer.

1999: Leaves come down quickly now, and the wood lots are dull. It must have been the ashes and hickories that made them bright. Mrs. Lawson’s maple is completely gone; I missed tracking it this year. By the back workshop, my “secret” maple is bare. The front maple has maybe a fourth of its leaves, still bright gold. In the greenhouse: one bud on a Christmas cactus.

2000: Several Christmas cacti budding, some well along. Between Springfield and Wilmington, the landscape is on the way to late fall, ashes and the early trees gone. At Xenia Avenue and Herman Street, the ginkgo is half down. My birch is gold and shedding at school, beech at its rusty best, the dozen maples in my maple grove three-fourths fallen. Out on the freeway, the sky is gray, and the horizon is dull and brown.

2001: The Korean lilac is pale yellow green now. At school, the red maple is three-fourths bare, the remaining leaves yellow. Along Main Street in Columbus, the sycamores are keeping most of their foliage. Outside my window, the grape leaves are suddenly changing to a red gold. The Danielson’s sugar maple is down, the ginkgo at Herman and Xenia Avenue is at full color and half down, Lil’s maple is fully turned and shedding. The red mulberries are half stripped, and the neighbor’s house shows through. In Xenia, silver maples peaking in their dusky gray gold. The sky above the yard is open now, and at night the streetlights shine into the living room.

2002: Still a few of the miniature hollyhocks in the south garden, still a few blue spiderworts. Lamb’s ear foliage is about a foot high, providing a silver touch to the browning ground. At the entrance to the village, three raccoon kits were run over together last night, so young, born most likely in late September.

2003: At South Glen this morning, the undergrowth was covered with frost, the trees tattered, sycamores bare, some oaks half down, bright yellow osage leaves falling. Two buzzards circling. Starlings and robins heard in the distance. At home, Lil’s tree is in full color, starting to shed. The Danielson’s tree is three-fourths fallen. Butterfly bushes and Russian sage continue in bloom.

2004: Lil’s maple is deep, deep gold and starting to shed, the Danielsons’ is half down. I pulled up the drooping coleus bed, uncovering the parsley, chives and lavender underneath. Daffodils planted on either side of the new arbor.

2008: Several cardinals in the alley this morning, one cardinal song around noon.

October 25th
The 298th Day of the Year

My window shows the traveling clouds,
Leaves spent, new seasons, alter'd sky.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sunrise/set: 7:56/6:42 Day's Length: 10 hours 46 minutes
Average High/Low: 60/40 Average Temperature: 50
Record High: 83 - 1963 Record Low: 25 - 1962

Weather
Today brings one more statistical movement towards winter: the chances for a morning freeze in the 20s rises to 40 percent for the first time since late March; and today and the 26th are the two October days most likely to bring a hard freeze. Highs in the 70s occur 15 percent of the years; there's a 30 percent chance of 60s, 25 percent chance for 50s, twenty percent chance for 40s, ten percent for 30s. Rain or snow comes 45 percent of the days. Skies are completely overcast four days in ten.

Natural Calendar
Today is the average killing frost date for the counties around Yellow Springs. Between now and the arrival of early winter around December 8th, there should be about 20 to 25 relatively mild, dry days for fertilizing, harvesting, wood cutting, planting spring crops, raking leaves, transplanting, and digging in spring bulbs.

Daybook
1982: No flowers blooming except Queen Anne's lace along the roadsides, a few asters in the woods. Canopy almost gone in some parts of the Glen.

1983: Maples full color, full yellow in front of our house and in Mrs. Lawson’s yard. Raspberries are finally past their peak. Only a third of a pint today, leaves becoming purple. Garden still strong, zucchini still producing.

1984: Jimsonweed is still open in the dry soybean fields.

1985: South Glen: Except for the osage, a few oaks, and occasional sycamores, all the leaves are down. Fields are brown. Robins are gone. It's late fall now in spite of the warm, windless days, the lack of killing frost.

1986: Rapid leaf-fall occurring at peak color, sudden climax of middle fall. But Lil's maple is late, as usual, just starting to turn.

1988: Magnolias near my doors are turning light yellow green, still have all their leaves. The tall poplar at the south wall is deepening, but still holding near summer color. Pussy willows and cherry are browning lightly. Geese flying south in a "V" at 7:05 p.m. No crickets heard tonight.

1992: Crows boisterous at 6:40 a.m., stayed in the back trees five or ten minutes. One daddy longlegs still hunting on the buttercup foliage in the south garden.

1995: Today I stopped again at Grinnell Pond looking for robins. This time, the woods was quiet, not even a chickadee.

1998: Starting from the height of middle fall on the 20th of October, I drove north toward Fargo to see the trees and visit Uncle Bill. The days of Yellow Springs Time fell away the farther I traveled. In two days and 1100 miles, I went well into Glen Helen November in which color no longer lay on the trees but on the radiant winter rye, the black earth, and green roadsides glowing in the low angle of the sun.
There were no clouds in the six days of my trip, the whole country paralyzed under a vast high-pressure system that warmed the Dakotas into the 70s. And as I traveled, the land opened up, the sun became more powerful, was no longer the filtered Yellow Springs sun.
When I arrived, I made my visits, met a new cousin, was given a tour of Grand Forks, and saw the devastation that the flood had caused there over a year ago. Then, restless, I started home.
Leaving town about 6:00 a.m., I turned into the empty darkness south toward Fargo an hour away, not a car for miles, only one or two lights from human habitation. After a while, there was a hint of pink in the east, and then the glow spread deep into the north and south. Without a bush or weed to stop it, twilight engulfed the whole land and air. Then the sun rose sharper and bigger than I’d ever seen it, so big it made me uneasy, stirred some primitive fear inside me about solar divinity, so vast and mighty. Alone on the bare cusp of earth, I felt fragile and vulnerable before the wide, revealing emptiness of the prairie.
By the time full daylight came, I was a hundred miles southeast of Fargo, and I could see how the slightest addition to the landscape - a tree or a house or even a gentle swell in the pastures - diminished the grandeur of the horizon. It was not so much that objects or hills reduced visibility, although they certainly did that, but that each one detracted just a little from the perfection of the Dakota vision.
I reached Yellow Springs the next night, and in the morning, I went out to watch dawn over my small yard and pond. Even though the sky was mostly clear, I could only see a soft and filtered urban sunrise over this benign, cluttered habitat. It was good to be home to a safer, less naked place, in which day always came gently from behind the trees, and set, glorious and imperfect, flawed by power lines and people, into the city.

1999: The Danielson’s maple is at late peak, bright yellow orange. Mrs. Lawson’s maple is long gone. My secret maple is empty now. The front maple has maybe fifteen percent of its rich ochre leaves. In the pond, the water lily still has one bud, but the leaves are down to fifteen. No killing frost yet.

2000: Redbuds naked now. Major sweet gum fall begins. The ginkgo at Xenia Avenue and Herman is 95 percent down. Most of the burning bush leaves are gone. One woolly bear caterpillar seen; but they’re rare this year.

2001: Seasons tied to the fields and woods: space and passage unified. Landmarks containing past and future. Time as explicator of space, space as anchor of time, the visible matter and form of time.

2002: The bamboo foliage has started to yellow in places.

2003: A warm morning before the rain arrives. The bamboo sways against the greenhouse wall (the first Christmas cactus opening inside, jade trees budding). All around the neighborhood starlings and blackbirds cluck and cackle. A few robins calling in the honeysuckles. A flock of crows flies over at 8:30. Two small redbud trees transplanted, the lawn mowed, the zinnias pulled up in the 70- degree afternoon.

2004: The first red Christmas cactus flowers opened today in the greenhouse.

2006: Two camel crickets found this morning, one in the bathtub, another under the bed. In the greenhouse, one white Christmas cactus and one red have been in full bloom for two days.

2007:Christmas cacti, which were left outside until last week, just have small buds. Cardinal sang once at 7:50 (EDT). Almost all of Mateo’s and Don’s black walnut fruits have fallen; one tree near the alley still retains most of its walnuts. Redbud leaves are falling. Our small crab apple is almost bare. Lil’s tree is still holding back, mostly green; the golden patches on the Danielsons’ tree are spreading. Flocks of blackbirds and starlings as I walked this morning, veering and swooping in the windswept day. No robins heard for quite a while.

2008: Danielsons’ maple is full orange and shedding. Lil’s is a third to more turned. Two of Don’s serviceberry trees are still keeping their foliage; a third is bare. The secret maple is still golden. Roses and late rudbeckia plants continue to offer highlights of color in the north garden. No crickets last night, no katydids. No birdcalls heard.

October 26th
The 299th Day of the Year

This tiny corner of the earth that is ours gives a feeling of deep content and security; this is the base to which we can always come back, and be ourselves, alone, completely free from the outside world.

Charles Burchfield

Sunrise/set: 7:57/6:41 Day's Length: 10 hours 44 minutes
Average High/Low: 60/40 Average Temperature: 50
Record High: 83 - 1963 Record Low: 21 - 1962

Weather
Today’s chances for morning frost are 55 percent, and the likelihood of rain is only 15 percent. The temperature distribution: 25 percent chance for highs in the 70s, thirty percent for 60s, fifteen percent for 50s, twenty-five percent for 40s, five percent for 30s. Completely overcast conditions occur four days in ten.

Natural Calendar
With Daylight Savings Time, this morning's sunrise time is the latest of the year, shared with the dark mornings of early January in Standard Time. The day’s length is the same as the length of February 13th.

Daybook
1984: A second-spring field of dandelions has gone to seed near Wilberforce, probably bloomed a week ago.

1986: Long flock of starlings passes over the house. Rains are stripping the late turning trees. First new green wheat field seen today.

1987: Aloe blooms in the greenhouse. Starlings and blackbirds cackling, whistling and clucking in the back woodlot this morning. Sweet gums falling, half the ginkgo leaves gone. Some Bradford pears are turning. Magnolias at school are half gone. Lawson's maple and my maple empty, Lil's maple burned, half fallen. Pussy willow leaves the color of golden pears, and thinned.

1988: 8:56 a.m. Geese fly over the house. On the way to Wilberforce: Winter wheat is green, a few stands of goldenrod still late full bloom. Along the tree line, autumn colors are becoming less prominent, more subtle. At school, ashes are gone, locusts gone. About a third of the maples left in the yard.
8:30 p.m. The full Buzzard Moon is rising from the other side of the Catholic church, and all the stars are out. Mars is high in the south, Jupiter leading the Pleiades. Branches more than half bare now, streetlights shining through into the yard.

1989: Almost the same as 1987 in Yellow Springs. On the way north to Lansing, in the last quarter of leaf color, the frequency of bare trees increases as I move toward Toledo, then foliage thicker again in the city (more maples). Willows only half turned there.

1990: South Glen, sunny, 48 degrees: Red smartweed still in bloom. Zigzag seeds puffed and fragile, crows and crickets loud. Wooly bears all over the road to the Glen. Hundreds of grasshoppers along the path through the butterfly preserve, milkweed scattered like thistle down. One violet holding. No spider webs. Box elder seeds still hanging, glistening. Half moon up along the eastern tree line. Outside my window, starlings cackle and whistle all day in the sun.

1992: Aloe blooming in the greenhouse, open maybe a day or two. In the warm evening, a few moths seen, then a bat circling the yard at five minutes to six (EST).

1993: Winter-colored gold finches seem to be replacing the house finches at the feeders now. More woolly bears, completely black, on Grinnell today, but not so many as on the 22nd.

1997: The first Christmas cactus flower bloomed yesterday. At least half of the cacti are budding now, and more will bloom this week. Along the south hedge, the red mulberries are losing their leaves, hurt by the frost. On Herman Street, the ginkgo has dropped hundreds of green leaves, also, I presume, because of the frost. But out along the roadways, the tree line still seems young. The maples are holding well, and greens still dominate across the area. The corn and soybean harvest is in full swing in the county. It’s a good year for pumpkins: a sale at the orchard for two dollars for any size, one dollar you-pick.

1999: As I go back over some of my weather notes, I realize how the practicality of my weather history is different from the practicality of a modern weather forecast. I keep track of the weather not so much to know the future as to know the present and myself better. Or maybe it’s a different kind of future I encounter when I chart the seasonal patterns.
Each of the sixty-five or so cold fronts that come through Yellow Springs each year arrives more or less at the same time, has its own character, its own barometric shape. Each one takes and gives certain things, shows or hides certain things. Once I put my hands on the storms, experience them for myself, count them, measure them, name them, I feel like I’m tending my own garden. I spread out the history, and I can see the breath of the earth, the real tide of events, and where I am.

2000: Full streetlight intrusion into the living room now that the leaves have come down.

2002: Cosmos and Mexican sunflowers remain bright, as do the impatiens. Zinnias all fell to powdery mildew three weeks ago. More sweet William sprouts planted, eight patches so far.

2003: The Korean lilac is yellowing. Redbud leaves have fallen, and Danielson’s maples is almost bare. Red maples in the triangle park are at their peak, full red. Other maples and sweetgum trees in Yellow Springs and Dayton are reaching yellow and red full color.

2004: The Korean lilac has lost more than half its leaves.

2006 The ginkgo at my classroom in Wilberforce is completely bare. My office ginkgo is ochre.

2007: The classroom ginkgo is just turning pale today. The Korean lilac is thinning on the north side of house, but holding at maybe three-fourths. Ruby Nicholson reported seeing the first junco today.

2008: Standing at the end of October, I hold fast to remnants and the emotions that stick to them, feelings that reflect the things I see. From the alley: the last two apples still hanging from apple tree, the shedding of the maple two houses further south, the wilting of the final purple fall crocus planted maybe half a century ago by Frank’s sister, the blackening of the tall goldenrod behind Mateo’s old house.
In the yard: the first reddening of the oakleaf hydrangea, the withering of Japanese knotweed leaves yellowing of the Jerusalem artichoke leaves, the hosta leaves and the wild asparagus, the blackening of the dahlia stalks and the impatiens burned by frost, the resilience of the last maroon viburnum fragments, the two autumn violets hidden among the sweet William foliage, the stubborn last red roses and golden coneflowers, the steady feeding of chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, sparrows, cardinals, finches.
Down High Street, a shedding magnolia, a gilded ginkgo, the deep, transparent orange of the Danielsons’ maple tree and the deep red of Lil’s burning bush, black privet berries appearing as their foliage thing, the ground covered by leaves from the corner sugar maples, grass by the pavement still glowing in the low November sun, crab apple tree berries firm and fat, soft honeysuckle berries all along the street. And Diane reports a fresh tall bellflower along the river, south near where the swinging bridge used to be.
I am not my thoughts, the book I am reading tells me. But the verbal and spiritual construct of autumn requires a certain commitment to collection and assimilation. For the duration of that brief season of synthesis, I reside in a private cell of impressions that gives form and meaning to me from its pieces.

October 27th
The 300th Day of the Year

Old October's purt' nigh gone,
And the frosts is comin' on
Little heavier every day.

James Whitcomb Riley

Sunrise/set: 7:58/6:39 Day's Length: 10 hours 41 minutes
Average High/Low: 59/40 Average Temperature: 50
Record High: 81 - 1897 Record Low: 21 - 1903

Weather
Chances for frost are 45 percent, for rain 30 percent, for totally overcast skies 55 percent, for highs in the 70s twenty-five percent, for 60s fifteen percent, for 50s fifty percent, for 40s ten percent.

Natural Calendar
Many years, the canopy along the river is almost completely open by this time of the month. The water, low because of October’s sparse precipitation, is perfectly clear. Along the shoreline, white snakeroot seeds come apart in downy clusters like thistle seeds or goldenrod. Winter craneflies spin in the sun.

Daybook
1983: Geese fly over house at 5:45 p.m.

1985: Geese fly over the house at 5:37 p.m.

1986: Ginkgoes suddenly full yellow, sycamores deep gold along Corey Street.

1988: Sycamores all gold along Corey Street, but sycamore leaves are gone at South Glen.

1989: Lansing, Michigan: Only the last oaks and maples hold. Autumn haze, black tree line against a white, bright horizon, sun highlighting gray goldenrod tufts and flashes of gold from the maples and poplars. Burning bush still holds red, winter wheat is up, shining green.

1990: Leaves past their peak now, but still strong. Primroses, planted in the early spring, are blooming, one red, one yellow, one blue. A cardinal sang off and on while I cleaned up the garden this morning, and geese flew over. After three frosts: the last tomatoes and zucchini gathered. Robins migrating through the yard today.

1992: The first tier of maples has fallen, the second level is full color now, maybe half the trees are bare, half full color. No birds heard today.

1995: At the Mill, robins flocking yesterday afternoon and now this morning too, steady chirping and fluttering. Near sundown yesterday as I was coming back from the dam, about three dozen buzzards suddenly appeared over the river bend, reminiscent of the way I saw them a decade ago.

1998: Asian ladybugs reported at the schools now, increasing in numbers as the week progresses. And a call from Clifton a few days ago about an invasion there. In the garden, I dug up two chard plants and brought them to the greenhouse for a winter experiment.

1999: The pond is cluttered with leaves. A new frog seems to have come to live in them. I haven’t seen him, but he dives whenever I approach, unlike the summer frog that sat and watched me from under a rock. Late afternoon: Lil’s maple has been turning all day, now is deep golden brown; two days ago it was almost fully green. Mrs. Lawson’s far maple matches the color of Lil’s.

2000: Cabbage moth and small gold butterfly seen. In the village, the late locusts are down, ginkgoes starting to shed, pink quince three-fourths bare, some sweetgum trees are three-fourths, catalpas seven-eighths shed. Out in the countryside, the tree line is brown and empty except for scattered bright osage and maples. In the south garden, late mums, a handful of gaura, spiderworts, two daisies left. Along the stone wall, the yellow roses are the most beautiful they’ve been all year. In the greenhouse, several Christmas cacti are blooming.

2001: Casey called this afternoon: a giant flock of herring gulls feeding in a soybean field north of town. The beans, he said, had just been harvested, and he’d never seen so many gulls. My books say they are migrating now towards the Ohio and Mississippi valleys; Casey found them.

2002: Full color of the first and second tier of leaves. Cottonwoods mostly down. Hostas are yellowing.

2003: The Danielson’s tree is down.

2005: The Danielson’s tree is all pale gold and losing leaves. Lil’s maple is still mostly green; her burning bush is deep red. The red-orange maple toward Limestone street is shedding but still vibrant. Mrs. Timberlake’s maple is blanching a little, but remains in early fall. In the alley behind Mateo’s house, chicory was opening at 7:45 this morning. Christmas cacti brought in from the back yard, many of the plants budding. On the road to Wilmington, the woodlots are still in full color, but shedding continues to increase.

2007: Robins chirping and whinnying , starlings chattering in the alley this morning, some starlings in the alley pine tree. The alley
maple is shedding hard now. Mexican sunflowers cut back today; they are still blooming, but the stalks have collapsed, too tall. To Columbus and back this afternoon, the cottonwoods and many ashes down, but many ashes holding, and peak maple and sweetgum color throughout. Across the street, Lil’s maple and Mrs. Timberlake’s maple are still green, the Danielson’s more than half turned. The ash tree between the Lawson’s and the corner is pale yellow and holds all its leaves. Some burning bush in the area is full red; Lil’s favors the southern exposure.

2008: After a blustery night, the back yard shows hundreds of white mulberry leaves down, leaves that belonged to branches damaged in the passage of Hurricane Ike in September. In the alley, all but three of the apples have come down. The orange of the Danielsons’ maple deepens, becomes more transparent, stronger. The McDaniels’ maple is still yellow green, half back into summer.

October 28th
The 301st Day of the Year

Once you have uncovered a portion of the year's cycle, you can see the past and tell the future. Innocence is gone. The aesthetic sense sharpens. Beauty and time become inseparable.

Sunrise/set: 7:59/6:38 Day's Length: 10 hours 39 minutes
Average High/Low: 59/39 Average Temperature: 49
Record High: 81 - 1900 Record Low: 23 - 1976

Weather
The period between October 28th and November 1st is the best time remaining in the year for late harvest and outdoor activities. The sun shines more often these days than on any others for the rest of the year. October 28th is usually the driest of all those days, with the chance for rain dropping to only ten percent. Skies are clear to partly cloudy 80 percent of the time. Temperature distribution is almost identical to that of yesterday: 25 percent chance for 70s, fifteen percent for 60s, fifty percent for 50s, ten percent for 30s. Chances for frost fall slightly to 30 percent.

Natural Calendar
Cabbage worms still eat the cabbages and kale, but the seasons of tomatoes, beans, eggplant, and squash are usually over as October ends. Some years, houseflies still get in the back door. The last crickets sing in the milder afternoons and nights. A few butterflies still hunt for flowers. Grasshoppers and woolly bear caterpillars are still common. Small moths play in the woods.

Daybook
1982: Covered Bridge: Cucumber beetle sunning on the tip of an old wingstem. Two blue bellflowers cling to a dead stem. Rose foliage yellowing. Canopy about two-thirds gone, woods dry and brown.

1984: To Maryland: Most leaves gone along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but Washington D.C. and much of southern Maryland seem near late peak of color. Sundrops, Queen Anne's lace, occasional crown vetch, daisies, a few asters, a few rape plants, two or three white moth mulleins, some helianthus still in bloom there. All goldenrod gone, but the South clearly has more leaves and later wildflowers. Buzzards seen in the mountains and near the coast.

1985: Robin migration seems to be done. Only occasional peeps heard.

1986: Geese fly over about 9:00 a.m.

1987: Geese fly over at 9:05 a.m.

1988: On the other side of leaf-turn and leaf-fall: fragments of foliage, the patterns of the bare branches isolated without the confusion and the monotony of summer green or the dramatic power of middle-fall color.

1989: Geese fly over at 10:00 a.m. Christmas cactus: small buds noticed.

1990: First white mulberry leaves fell today after three frosts. Ginkgoes paling more and falling a little. Magnolias hold most leaves, yellow green. Lil's maple full.

1991: Magnolias gone, ginkgoes full gold, half to three-fourths gone.

1993: To North Carolina: East at dawn, the sun, huge and orange through the violet cirrus on the horizon, gives a russet glow to the trees. The autumn reds shine.
Through the Ohio piedmont outside of Chillicothe, fields of gray goldenrod, the hills’ rust and browns of late fall, remaining sycamores pale green, leaves edged with decay. Smell of wood smoke here and there.
Past Portsmouth along the Ohio River, some hills of oaks are gold and orange, autumn completely intact a hundred and fifty miles southeast of Yellow Springs. Sumac leaves appear on about a third of their branches, bare trees become less common.
At Charleston, West Virginia, the yellow catalpas, yellow poplars, cottonwoods, and maple oranges become more prominent, setting off and showing off the other colors. I can see that the first step to late fall is the disintegration of the brighter leaves.
South toward Beckley, more pines appear, tempering the losses, the blush of maroon and rich yellow ashes comes in at about 180 miles from Yellow Springs. The yellow poplars have all their leaves by now, hickories here too, the sugar gums are full again, their star-shaped leaves red orange.
At 200 miles, the red sumacs have about three fourths of their leaves. Then within just a few minutes, late fall returns, hills with different plantings appearing dark and past their prime, then back again to middle fall for an hour or two.
Then approaching North Carolina, I come into early middle fall, with far more green trees, and many of the cottonwoods and poplars still strong, no hint of the fragile status of the season two hundred miles north.
Only a few flowering plants seen on the trip, the grass and flora at the same point all along the 500-mile line into the Carolinas. A few clumps of violet asters grew from the cliffs in central West Virginia. Thirty miles north of Beckley, one primrose stood by itself in a narrow segment of soil between the two sides of the freeway. Milkweed pods were open and disheveled all the way from Yellow Springs to Winston-Salem. Once in a while, a goldenrod plant had its September Ohio color.
I called home and talked with Jean tonight. She said Uncle Bill had phoned from northern Minnesota in the middle of the first heavy snowstorm of the season.

1994: At South Glen, nothing in bloom except new, blue tall bellflowers growing in the axils of their long, tattered stems.

1998: Now deterioration speeds up, the fullness of a week ago suddenly collapses in the morning rain. The unity, the cohesiveness of the summer and middle fall disappear.

1999: To Xenia: Sweetgum trees red, the silver maples turning palomino-champagne gold, ginkgoes olive green, oaks brown and red and rust. This is the last phase of the peak.

2001: Cardinal sang at 6:45 (EST) this morning. Small flock of goldfinches with gray winter breasts seen in the redbud tree this afternoon.

2002: Flock of blackbirds flew over at 9:23 a.m. One jade tree budded in the greenhouse. To Wilmington: the cottonwoods are down, but many maples and oaks keep their full middle autumn color. One golden birch almost bare. Woolly-bear caterpillars are common on the road again.

2003: Lil’s maple half gone, the Danielson’s all down except for a few hundred leaves.

2004: Lil’s maple is half gone. Mrs. Timberlake’s is maybe three-fourths fallen. In the yard and out at Duckwall’s at the edge of the Glen, robins are chirping and calling, moving south. The Danielson’s tree is down. No woolly bear caterpillars seen through the entire autumn.

2005: One purple clematis flower opened yesterday or today in the sun. One yellow rose cut for the kitchen table. Pink roses continue to bloom in the northwest garden. The secret maple is suddenly full gold. Danielsons’ maple full, Lil’s only about a third turned. The leaves remain mostly green on the Korean lilac. A freeze last night killed most of the elephant ears, impatiens and zinnias. Much of the basil survived. At South Glen, a few scattered aster flowers remain, but little else. The foliage of the wood nettle is shriveled. On our walk this morning, robin clucking in the distance. The spent goldenrod, wingstem, ironweed, and one blooming parsnip were white with the frost. The puffy white seed heads of the sow thistles had disappeared in the rain of a few days ago. Most of the leaves were down along the river. The sycamores seemed to be the hardiest. Tonight at 7:45, Mars, as large and bright as it will ever be this century, was rising over the village; Venus was huge in the southwest. As I type this, a small mosquito hovers around the computer screen, maybe came in with some of the Christmas cacti I brought into the greenhouse yesterday.
And Cathy sent the following from Vermont: “I can't imagine how we are going to get through the winter here. That doesn't stop the cold weather from advancing on us. The leaves here never turned, not in the normal sense. There are still green leaves and not a lot of bare trees. Some turned a bland yellow beige and dropped off. No reds, oranges. This week we had a snowstorm and were without power, and heat, and many trees and bushes down on our property, and all around. The snow too heavy for the trees with leaves still on. We lost big pieces of a giant willow, and old lilacs, and a mountain ash. All those ancient trees and shrubs. Sad.”

2007: First light frost of the fall this morning, but it caused very little damage. In the alley, one robin, starlings chirping.

2008: First heavy northeaster blankets New York and surrounding states with snow.

October 29th
The 302nd Day of the Year

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, -- his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunrise/set: 8:00/6:37 Day's Length: 10 hours 37 minutes
Average High/Low: 58/39 Average Temperature: 49
Record High: 82 - 1900 Record Low: 21 - 1925

Weather
The likelihood for sun rises to 85 percent today, and rain comes only once or twice in a decade. Frost occurs 60 percent of the mornings. Highs in the 70s occur 15 percent of the afternoons; 60s forty percent of the time, 50s thirty percent, 40s fifteen percent.

Natural Calendar
The week just past and the week to come are among the most dramatic of the year. Thirty days ago, the woods were green. Fifteen days ago, the leaves were at their peak; today, most of them are gone or ready to come down. The natural year is almost over; the storms that bring late fall will finish it.
The sun could shine another week, but 50 days before solstice, winter clouds often move over Yellow Springs, staying until April. The overcast skies are likely to bring rain a third of the next 30 days, and snow or sleet is ordinarily recorded on between one and four occasions before December 1st. Winds now start to rise to their winter speed, an average of nearly 15 miles an hour.

Daybook
1983: Mill Habitat: A few white and violet asters, some red clover, Queen Anne's lace, chicory. A little new wild lettuce foliage. Chestnut oak gone in some places, holding half in others. Buzzards still circling. Dogwoods mostly gone. The hickories and the tall canopy mostly bare. Honeysuckle still bright green, berries red in groups of four. In the woods across the hills everything is brown. Chipmunks seen and heard. In the village, where maples dominate, it is still the last phase of peak leaf color.

1985: Cherry tree and the pecan still hold all their leaves. Peach leaves gone. Some ginkgoes a third to three-fourths gone, others holding.

1986: Front maples mostly gone. Some magnolias almost bare. Buzzards circling Grinnell. Across the fields, the tree line is empty except for the oaks.

1989: A week in the 70s is ending, rivers low, grasses dry, harvest well underway. It is November before the rains, most leaves gone (but Lil's holds at half). Goldenrod all tufted and gray. An occasional bright maple in the fields stands out against the dull seeds and stalks. Some osage have lost their leaves, and their green fruits still hang on the lanky branches. Then on other osage trees, the fruits have fallen and the leaves have stayed.

1991: Brown finch at the feeder.

1995: Robins passing through the yard today, eating honeysuckle berries in the north hedge. At noon, a late monarch butterfly visited the south garden, heading south. A yellow-bellied woodpecker, chattering like a squirrel, worked at the back locust. Woolly bear caterpillars were still crossing the highways in the cold sun through the middle of the afternoon. On the way to the triangle park, I saw the witch hazels were in full bloom, leaves down, and the redbud tree was bare. More growth at the tips of the spruce at the park. The red maple there turned pale gold this past week, is losing leaves rapidly now. All the silver maples are shifting from pale green to a rich palomino tan. Most crab apples have lost their leaves, berries bright and fat. On High Street, the Danielson's maple is through; ours is deep orange, brittle, will be gone in a day or two. Lil's is half yellow and losing leaves. The red mulberries along the south hedge still hold on.

1997: Crickets were still singing when I went outside at 6:00 a.m. Doves started at 6:22, cardinals at 6:29, crows at 6:42, crickets quieting as the sky lightened. The yard silent by 6:55.
The sun rose at 7:00 (like on March 7), the day’s length moving toward 13 hours, an hour lost from the morning, an hour lost from the evening since summer solstice. Average temperatures down 4 degrees from the peak in July, highs down 4, lows down 4.
At South Glen, milkweed pods fully developed (some open), milkweed bugs still mating. All the white vervain is gone. Only one or two blossoms on the small-flowered agrimony. Golden patches of linden along the roadsides. Honeysuckle berries orange, one tall goldenrod plant opening.
First autumn violet discovered blooming in the path beyond the barn. Lizard’s tail dropping its foliage into Yellow Springs Creek, damselflies hunting in the pink smartweed. Burdock forming burs, Joe Pye weed almost all brown, knotweed just beginning to bloom, wild cucumber fruits an inch long. Jumpseeds have started to jump, and the first aster of the year is open.
Tulip trees are yellowing at the college, and cottonwoods are turning all at once. Elms, catalpas and hackberries are blanching, some Virginia creeper leaves deep red on the path, some black walnut and buckeye trees almost bare. Locust leaves are all over the parking lot at school. Some ash and maple foliage blushing.
At home, peach leaves drift down into the dahlias, knotweed half in bloom, new mullein sprouting in the iris bed, virgin’s bower opening on the trellis, stonecrop coming into bloom by the front porch. Dragon flies still hunt at the pond. New England aster buds are purple by the north trellis. Fireflies and Japanese beetles almost gone, chigger bites still itching on my right calf and ankle.
A long flock of blackbirds flew over Beavercreek when I was there this morning. Starlings filled the telephone lines in Xenia. Hundreds of yellow cabbage butterflies swarmed along Wilberforce-Clifton road this afternoon.

1998: Screech owl calls at 6:23 a.m. Crows come by at 6:33. Fish lie quietly in the pond now, respond only sluggishly to food. Lil’s tree suddenly starts to turn. The hostas are yellow green along the edges of their leaves. At Jacoby, a flock of robins. The canopy gone. Twenty-three white puffball mushrooms found on a green hillside in the middle of the sunny afternoon.

1999: To Caesar Creek, high of 75 degrees, sun and wispy cirrus. Fishing up river, explored several new places, but caught no fish. Then back to the hole where John and I caught bluegills this summer. The fish were still there and biting on wax worms. I must have caught thirty or so, kept twenty for eating. The landscape all around was bright and full of color. Even though more than half the leaves were down, the late maples and oaks were coming in together, more dramatic than the early color this year, more intense. Now the ginkgoes are turning all shades from deep gold to pale yellow-green. At the lake, only a few small-flowered asters seen, one goldenrod.

2001: At the Mill: red smartweed, one periwinkle, a few white and violet asters. In the yard, asters gone, redbud and all the maples bare (including Lil’s across the street). Only the osage remain. Beech half turned on Dayton street. Burning bush foliage more than half fallen. On the way to Columbus: one late monarch seen crossing the freeway heading south. Across the countryside, entire sections of the tree line are gray. Five deer killed in 50 miles of highway: rutting season. At school, my red maple is finally gone, and most of my grape vine leaves. The white oak is still stable. In Columbus and at Antioch, the sycamores are thinned but not empty; in the woods along the river, all their leaves have come down. Yellow poplars have shed at Duckwall’s.

2002: This morning at four o’clock, a wonderful wind, the bamboo singing against the windows, the red mulberry trees rustling and waving. A crack and thud as a branch somewhere broke in a gust. The woodpile’s tarp was blown toward the south, exposing the logs. The Halloween cold front was on schedule, exciting after so long an autumn without change, so late and mild and dry. The sky was pale from the clouds, then an opening, the third-quarter moon overhead and Orion standing in the southwest, betraying the coming of November. I feel an urgency to get on with winter, to go past the decay.

2003: A long flock of blackbirds flew over the neighborhood at 7:05 a.m., continued until 7:10. Jean mentioned that she saw two trees full of turkey vultures near the riding center about 7:45 this morning.

2004: In the soft early morning, whistling crickets were whistling like muted screech owls as I went jogging. Mrs. Timberlake’s maple is shedding hard, still holds maybe a fourth of its leaves. Lil’s maple is still deep gold but continues to shed, too. The magnolia next to the Timberlake’s is also gold and coming down. The quince at the southwest side of the house is deep gold like the magnolia. In the east garden, the early stonecrop foliage has yellowed. The late stonecrop is still deep green. At the end of the day, Lil’s tree is down to just about a tenth of its leaves. Mrs. Timberlake’s is gone. Jerry and Lee’s sweetgum is half yellow. All the trees of heaven have lost their leaves.

2005: As I sat outside in the sun on the back porch talking to Tat, I watched Asian lady beetles flying by looking for winter quarters.

2007: The second frost of the year came last night, burning all the dahlias. Grackles came to the bird feeder this morning for the first time since summer. The plum tree at Antioch School is maroon-purple, has most of its leaves.

2008: Morning frosts continue and cool afternoons. Only one apple left on the alley apple tree. Starlings fluttering through the downtown pear trees this morning.

October 30th
The 303rd Day of the Year

When the Pleiades are strong, then remember to plough in season: and so the completed year will fitly pass beneath the earth.

Hesiod

Sunrise/set: 8:01/6:36 Day's Length: 10 hours 35 minutes
Average High/Low: 58/39 Average Temperature: 49
Record High: 81 - 1927 Record Low: 18 - 1895

Weather
Chances for a day in the 70s double over those of yesterday to a full 30 percent. Sixties can be expected on another 30 percent of the afternoons, 50s on another 30 percent; ten percent chance for 40s. Half the mornings bring frost, and skies are clear 80 percent of the time; rain occurs on just 15 percent of the days. Between today and April 14th, there is a possibility of a low temperature below 20 degrees.

Natural Calendar
The hay harvest and potato digging are complete today in typical years, and the cutting of corn and soybeans is winding down. Over half of the sugar beet crop has ordinarily been taken up. Farmers are shelling corn, stripping tobacco, chiseling ground.

Daybook
1982: Robins still here. Most peach leaves gone. One dandelion found blooming today. Forsythia is burned red from frost. Celandine and chicory foliage is strong. Mountain maple at Antioch holds its leaves, turning orange. Mums still full bloom.

1983: Starlings in the back yard. Out along Clifton Road, some of the lower leaves still show color, but the background consists of brown branches instead of foliage. Watercress is reviving for late fall and winter at Jacoby.

1984: One monarch butterfly seen today, and a couple woolly bears.

1985: My mother sent me a George Cooper poem from my childhood, mourning for the falling leaves:

“Come little leaves,” said the wind one day,
“Come o’er the meadows with me and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold,
For summer is gone and the days grow cold.”

Soon as the leaves heard the wind’s loud call,
down they came fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the glad little songs they knew.

“Cricket, good-bye, we’ve been friends so long,
Little brook, sing us your farewell song;
Say you are sorry to see us go;
Ah, you will miss us, right well we know.

“Dear little lambs in your fleecy fold,
Mother will keep you from harm and cold;
Fondly we watched you in vale and glade,
Say will you dream of your loving shade?”

Dancing and whirling the little leaves went,
Winter had called them, and they were content;
Soon fast asleep in their earthy beds,
The snow laid a coverlet over their heads.

1986: Cardinal sings 9:34 a.m.

1987: Sweet gum leaves finally down at the Wilberforce, but some still full and red twenty miles away in Byron. Magnolias about gone by my door.

1988: Two nights near 20 degrees brought down the osage and white mulberry leaves.

1993: Returning from North Carolina in the rain, the season having changed in a day. When I got to Greensboro on the 28th, the sky was clear and the temperature in the 60s. The next morning, the first Carolina frost (according to the motel clerk) covered my car windows. Now I drive north through the mountains, through fog and low clouds. The hills have lost all their color in the gloom. In Ohio, the first snow of the year is falling, accumulating up to four inches deep by the roadside, sticking on the newly plowed fields. This was Uncle Bill's storm in northern Minnesota just yesterday.
Coming back home, I've gone from the middle of October into the middle of November. Home in the greenhouse, two Christmas cacti have their first buds. At South Glen, late afternoon, wet snow falling into the dark river, honeysuckles still green, bending under the weight of the snow, the paths slippery, no bird song, the road past the covered bridge quiet. By the riverbank, the sound of the snow dropping from branches, plopping into the water.

1997: Ladybugs swarm on every building at Wilberforce, all over the southeast wall of Wesley, and at the dorms and at the library. At home in the pond, the fish do not come up to eat the food I throw out to them.

1999: No ladybugs at all this year. Was it the drought? Were they delayed or destroyed by the late summer’s lack of rain?

2000: On the lawn at school in Springfield, a bright yellow butterfly flew around and about, finding dandelions blooming here and there, lighting on them for their nectar, sharing them with bees.

2001: Starlings in the back trees cackling, crows in the distance at 8:30 this morning. Tonight, occasional trill of a cricket, temperature at 40 degrees.

2002: In spite of yesterday’s storm, the full late middle fall color holds. There are more bare trees, but not a significant deterioration of the tree line. Some New England asters are still blooming along the highway. This afternoon, Mrs. Lawson’s maple began to come apart, but the Danielson’s maple is still full gold, and Lil’s is just beginning.

2003: Robins clucking in the honeysuckles at 7:30 this morning, blackbirds chattering throughout the neighborhood. Lil’s tree half shed, bright gold in the sunlight. Three woolly-bear caterpillars on the road to Wilmington.

2004: A warm hard wind all day, temperature reaching into the upper 70s. Lil’s tree is down, and the Korean lilac. The magnolia is shedding quickly. Maple leaves pile up against the forsythia, pushed there by the wind. Lilies planted along the northeast garden.

2005: Cathy continues our conversation from Vermont: “I want you to understand that this leaf thing here is no just a mild complaint about off-ish color. It's a sci-fi-weird phenomenon. Even old native Vermonters say they've never seen anything like it. It's a green fall. There were so many green leaves on the trees in this snowstorm this week that the power company said they had over 100 trees-on-lines just in our little area. But if you saw it, you see why it happened -- branches of green leaves loaded with wet snow, bent to the ground or broken. We never have green leaves the beginning of November. The oaks are usually getting brown now and I saw one this week still all green. We haven't had a bad frost yet. A friend told me tonight that her eggplant was blooming again. The nurseries we sell ads to are complaining that people aren't buying mums because there is so much still blooming in the garden. The field and yard grass is bright emerald green and growing like crazy. The recent fall has been everyday wet. Rain and fog. Just beautiful to see. But lots of floods and septic problems (including ours). Earlier in the fall we had 90- degree weather in September.”

2006: The russets and browns of the oaks now dominate the landscape up through northern Indiana, the maples having disappeared from the woodlots. In villages and urban areas, almost all of the silver maples and many sugar maples hold, as they still do a little in Yellow Springs. But Lil’s maple has started shedding, the Danielsons’ maple is bare, and Mrs. Timberlake’s maple is bright yellow and coming down. Certainly leafdrop is way on the other side of peak throughout the lower Midwest. Bittersweet has opened at the corner of High and Limestone Streets, and in the alley robin calls are loud as migration intensifies. Small flocks of sparrows move through the honeysuckles. Trumpet vine leaves are suddenly down, Korean lilac and the red viburnum three-fourths bare. Two Shasta daisies in bloom. Blue privet berries are showing more and more now. One forsythia branch winding through one of the fences has yellow flowers, and three blossoms remain on the tall coneflowers. The small blue bindweeds, however, have disappeared, and the small white asters have ended their season. One goldenrod, broken off early in the fall, is blooming now, but the chicory has closed for the year, and the Jerusalem artichoke plant are withering. Don’s burning bush is still bright, but Lil’s has lost most of its foliage. Not a single Asian lady beetle seen this year. In the yard, three pink rose buds remain, two Shasta daisies. Louis the cat caught a vole in the greenhouse last night.
This afternoon, Jean and I planted daffodils, tulips, anemones, and allium. The sun was shining, and the high reached near 70 degrees for the first time in what seemed like weeks.

October 31st
The 304th Day of the Year

The strong, somber colors of the fading leaves, much greenness still, the straight trunks the trees emerging, the skeleton of the woods now revealed.

Harlan Hubbard

Sunrise/set: 8:03/6:34 Day's Length: 10 hours 31 minutes
Average High/Low: 58/39 Average Temperature: 49
Record High: 80 - 1950 Record Low: 20 - 1909

Weather
The 31st is typically a fine day, with temperatures in the 70s forty percent of the time, highs in the 60s another 40 percent, 50s coming the remaining 20 percent. Rain or snow falls just one year in five. Skies are mostly sunny 80 percent of the days, and frost occurs on only 25 percent of the mornings.

Natural Calendar
Sometimes the maple and white mulberry leaves that survived the first 30 days of October drop all at once. The ginkgoes too may shatter overnight into a shining circle below their limbs. Willows, though, are only half turned. Bradford pears are still green, prolonging an illusion of September. Silver maples can be untouched by the radical shift in the season, holding until the nights go into the teens. Dogwoods will be pink, magnolias gold, oaks red-orange for a few days longer. Beneath them, privet and spicebush will remain strong throughout November.

Daybook
1982: Some new ragweed has grown three feet tall. Some goldenrod is still golden along High and King streets, still a few asters, some chicory blooming. Willows hold on, grape leaves red and purple at the end of their color peak.

1983: One red quince has flowered at the northeast corner of the yard; the foliage around it: shades of mustard, forest green, blood red, specks of black. Rose of Sharon graying, thinning, oaks full color, rust and burnt sienna, white mulberry still untouched, mock orange still green, Chinese maple deep red, holding all its leaves, apple, locust, peach gradually disappearing. Magnolia on Dayton Street almost bare.

1984: Full second-spring parsnip blossoming. Queen Anne's lace seems to be getting stronger in places. Chicory continues. Clovers, sow thistles common. Many forsythia bushes flowering, jimson weed and burdock blooming in a late pasture, hemlock and sweet rocket growing back by the Covered Bridge. White mulberry starts to turn. At Brush Row, two ginkgoes have lost all their leaves, a third is mostly green. All peach and cherry foliage gone.

1986: A cardinal sang at 8:51 a.m. Lil's leaves half down. Buzzards still circling. A few crickets at night. At Sycamore Hole, chubs bite fiercely. Right after the peak leaf drop, there is another phase for the later maples, sugar gum, and oaks; that period seems more durable, maybe because I expect the last leaves to fall at any minute – they persist another week or two.

1987: Robins peeping in the yard this afternoon.

1991: Cardinal at 6:55 a.m. Lil's tree gone. Bradford pear leaves falling, maybe a fourth down. Christmas cactus blooms, earliest ever.

1992: Most red mulberry leaves, twisted, dark gray, have fallen in the last couple of days with rain and temperatures in the 40s. The southern boundary to the yard is open. Quince at the southeast corner of the house is thinning, leaves a yellow dun. Magnolias are finally bare at Wilberforce.

1993: Gray and cold, the ground mottled with snow, the chilliest Halloween since we've been in Ohio.

1999: In this most golden of late middle autumns, even the poplars and birches are turning a rich ochre, and the late maples hold. The beech is coming in with the ginkgoes now, and the Bradford pears are tinged with red.

2000: Some red oak down, a third of the English oak, a third of the ginkgoes at school.

2001: On the way to Columbus, I watch the mottled landscape of late fall. Now, like at the end of September when leafturn is just starting, the exceptions become the focus. In early fall, it is the Judas maples that stand out. At the end of October, it is the occasional tree that holds its leaves. As I drive towards Washington Courthouse late in the afternoon, the grass and winter wheat shine in the low sun, glow against the dark tree line.

2003: A flock of robins loud along the river in South Glen this morning. Crows chasing turkey vultures above me. One cabbage butterfly seen in the garden this afternoon.

2005: Plenty of clucking from robins and starlings in the mornings, crows pass by east of town. Lil’s maple and the secret maple are full gold, Danielsons’ full and falling. Tree of heaven branches were hurt by the recent frosts, are drooping, ready to fall. Throughout the countryside, middle autumn persists. Talked to Mateo, just returned from Tuscany: the vines are turning, he said. Along north garden and in the woods, euonymus berries are white. In the alley, dogwood berries are white. Climbing bittersweet is open at the Antioch School; Jean brought some home for our front door wreath yesterday. More Asian lady beetles seen today.

2007: Peak color continues throughout the countryside. In town, many maples are shedding (the alley maple is almost all gone), but the secret maple and Moya’s maple hold with at least half their foliage. Lil’s maple is just becoming tinted with rust, the Danielsons’ maple is reaching full color, while Mrs. Timberlake’s is still August green. Many ashes continue to be strong maroon and gold. On the way to Beavercreek, I saw a huge flock of blackbirds feeding in the soybean fields. Large flocks of starlings and blackbirds throughout my drive.