Stay together
Learn the flowers
Go light

Gary Snyder

ASTRONOMICAL
The Cherry Pie Moon wanes throughout the period, entering its final quarter on July 4 at 5:13 p.m. Rising in the middle of the night and setting in the afternoon, the moon will move overhead before sunrise,

Aphelion, the sun’s position farthest from Glen Helen, occurs on July 6 at 11:00 a.m. Starting on the 7th, the sun and the Earth begin to move farther apart, reaching about an eighth of the way toward winter solstice by the first day of August. Sirius, the Dog Star of middle summer’s Dog Days, lies centered in the southern sky at noon.

NOTES FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF MIDDLE SUMMER
THE THIRTY-SECOND WEEK OF THE NATURAL YEAR
In the second week of Middle Summer, timothy is bearded with seeds, its pollen loose and fragile. The second cut of alfalfa has started, as well as the summer apple harvest, wheat harvest, and potato harvest. The corn is tasseling now, and the soybeans are knee high.

Almost all the lilies are budded or blossoming in the village gardens, all the purple coneflowers, all the bee balm, all the golden Heliopsis, all the violet mallow, and the white gooseneck loosestrife, all the roses, the Queen Anne’s lace and the rose of Sharon.

In the deep shade, wood nettle is chest high and budding. Teasel develops its violet blossoms along the roads and in the fields. Milkweed is still in full bloom, poised to create its pods and silky seeds. Early touch-me-nots are ready to be touched near the Glen streams. Under the high canopy, blue cohosh and the Jack-in-the-pulpit have produced their green berries, and green berries appear on privet and elderberry bushes, on the pokeweed, poison ivy, and trilliums.

Garlic mustard leaves and stalks are yellowing. May apples leaves s are browning and tattered, fruit gone. On the wild multiflora roses that bloomed in May, random leaves are turning yellow, the first leaves of autumn.