From brightening fields of ether fair-disclosed,
Child of the sun, refulgent Summer comes.
James Thomson

NOTES FOR THE TRANSITION TO MIDDLE SUMMER
THE THIRTY-FIRST WEEK OF THE NATURAL YEAR
When Rose of Sharon Blooms in Town
And Thistles Turn to Down
And Teasel and St. John’s Wort Flower in the Fields
And Wood Nettle Blossoms in the Deep Woods

    The Cherry Pie Moon waxes until it becomes totally full on June 26 at 6:30 a.m. Rising in the evening and setting in the morning, this moon lies high in the south after midnight.
    Venus and Mars are the evening stars in Leo during the month ahead, far in the west after sundown. Mars is red and appears much smaller than Venus. When you locate Venus and Mars, look back to the southwest to find Saturn in Virgo. Jupiter is in Pisces this month, coming up out of the east after midnight and moving overhead before dawn.

DRIFTING THISTLEDOWN
    At the beginning of Middle Summer, the pink blossoms of Canadian thistles and nodding thistles collapse into silver down that forms mats where the flowers have grown close together and the weather is damp. When the days are dry, the down is often picked up by the wind and carried across the countryside.
    The power of suggestion is always at work in the perception of seasons. A phenology of associations carries the mind backwards and forwards, from one marker to another. When one thing happens, something else is happening, too. The seeds of thistledown parallel the seeds of wild parsnips and hemlock. Drifting thistledown is an easy door to the flowering of purple coneflowers, wild petunias, bouncing bets, dayflowers, white vervain, blue vervain, dogbane, leatherflower, figwort, lesser stitchwort, pokeweed, St. John’s wort, teasel, wild lettuce, wood mint, wood nettle, leafcup, touch-me-not, lopseed, wingstem, and every kind of lily.
    Thistledown parallels the singing of cicada and the departure of young herons from their rookeries, is a sign that alewives are leaving their estuaries in the East and returning to the Atlantic Ocean. It announces the ripening of honeysuckle berries that feed new robins, grackles, starlings and blue jays.
    Thistledown points to the shortening of the days, the high, hot sun in Leo, the valediction of robinsong before sunrise, foretelling the cadence of the cicadas in the mornings, crickets and katydids at night, foretelling ragweed and goldenrod, tomatoes and corn and autumn raspberries, the planting of October turnips, foretelling milkweed pods and restless geese.