Heavy July. Too rampant and too lush;
High Summer, dull, fulfilled, and satiate.
Nothing to fear, and little to await.
The very birds are hush.
Dark over-burdened woods: too black, their green.

Vita Sackville-West

NOTES FOR THE FIFTH WEEK OF MIDDLE SUMMER
THE THIRTY-FIFTH WEEK OF THE NATURAL YEAR
The Lily Moon becomes full on July 25 at 8:37 p.m. Rising in the evening and setting in the morning, this moon moves overhead in the middle of the night. The end of July brings the Delta Aquarid meteors after 12:00 a.m. in Aquarius, and the Capricornid meteors in Capricorn. The bright moon, however, will make it hard to spot these shooting stars.

Now the Big Dipper is moving into the far northwest by 10:00 p.m., and will lie along the northern horizon after midnight. June’s planting star, Arcturus, has shifted deep into the western sky a few hours after sundown, and Pegasus, outrider of September, fills the east.

Average temperatures along the 40th Parallel reach their peak this week with highs at 85 and lows at 65. Averages remain at that level through the 28th of the month, after which they begin their autumn descent. The coldest averages of the local year remain steady for a similar period during the winter, reaching a normal high of 34 and a normal low of 18 on January 16, and starting their rise to summer on January 29.
After July 25, another quiet change takes place in village weather history: The chances for a high in the 80s or 90s falls slightly from 90 percent down to 75 percent. On August 1, the percentage drops to 70 percent, then to 65 percent by the 5th.

As August approaches, the morning birdsong that began in March cedes to the whine of the cicadas throughout the days and to the pulsing chants of the katydids at night. These last days of July add the evening crickets to the insect chorus, completing the full voice of the landscape for Late Summer.
Throughout the country, birds have begun to come together, flocking in anticipation of autumn. On the East Coast, shorebirds are beginning to move south, often stopping to rest on North Carolina’s outer banks.  In the honeysuckles of Yellow Springs, adult robins teach their young migration calls. Starlings flock together in our high trees, clucking and chattering.

From the Mississippi to New England, all of the year’s second-last major wave of wildflowers – the biennial gaura, Joe Pye weed, monkey flower, tall coneflower, clearweed, jumpseed, horseweed, ragweed, white snakeroot, prickly mallow, great willow herb, white boneset, great blue lobelia, ironweed, field thistle and Japanese knotweed – are blooming in the open fields and along the fence rows.