Watching the roadsides
All the way to Hattiesburg
Tracking chicory.

THE MOON
The Cherry Pie Moon enters its second quarter at 11:30 p.m. on June 18 and waxes throughout the week, becoming completely full on June 26 at 6:30 a.m. Rising in the afternoon and setting after midnight, the gibbous moon moves overhead in the evening.

NOTES FOR THE THIRD WEEK OF EARLY SUMMER
THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE NATURAL YEAR
     Middle Summer begins next week and lasts through the 10th of August In those six weeks, an hour is lost from the day’s length, and the year turns toward autumn.  Even though the night lengthens in this middle season, the amount of possible sunshine reaches its zenith, and the percentage of totally sunny days in a week is the highest of the year. And between now and the end of the first week of August, average temperatures vary just one degree.
     At the beginning of Middle Summer, purple coneflowers, gray-headed coneflowers, white vervain, oxeye, bouncing bets, ginseng, germander, teasel and wild lettuce blossom in the fields. In village gardens, oakleaf and Endless Summer hydrangeas, hollyhocks, mallow, Asiatic lilies, Oriental and day lilies enter full bloom; Russian sage, mid-season hostas, bee balm and gayfeather come into early bloom.  The rose of Sharon and the phlox are getting ready to flower.
      The earliest cicadas start to chant at the start of Middle Summer. Tiny waterstriders hatch in the ponds. Japanese beetles multiply in the crops and roses. This year’s ducklings and goslings are almost full grown.  Corn is tasseling. Most of the wheat is cut. The oats crop ripens and the first tier of soybeans blooms. June’s berries reach their peak, feeding the fledgling robins and starlings, grackles and cardinals as they transition to adulthood.
     In the woods and wetlands, tall bellflowers and spotted touch-me-nots open, and thimble plants set thimbles. Maroon seedpods form on the locusts. Some green-hulled Osage fruits, golf-ball size, are already on the ground. Thistles go to seed. Horseweed replaces sweet clover, parsnips and hemlock. Files of chicory line the highways north to Canada, east to Washington D.C., south into Georgia, and west across the Great Plains, blue radii of the season linking all of North America.