I stood there watching the wind ripple and wave through the grain, a sea of green animated with constant, unceasing movement, swirling about my waist as if alive, following no pattern of movement but waving now this way, now that, filled with an eternal surging restlessness, a great stirring of life.

August Derleth, A Sac Prairie Journal

NOTES FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF EARLY SUMMER
THE TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE NATURAL YEAR
WHEN MULBERRIES RIPEN FOR PIE
AND WINTER WHEAT TURNS GOLD

      The Duckling and Gosling Moon becomes the sweet Cherry Pie Moon at 6:15 a.m. on June 12. Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the new moon lies overhead in the middle of the day.
     Between June 8 and 11, the average temperature rise slows to one degree in four days instead of late spring’s one degree in three. Then, between the 15th to the 19th, it climbs just one degree in five days, reaching its summer zenith. Between June 9 and July 3, the day's length in Yellow Springs varies by no more than five minutes.

MARKERS IN EARLY SUMMER 

 I will measure one by one
through this sweetest afternoon
strawberries, mulberries,
goslings and dragon flies,
crickets and fireflies
under the waning moon,
sundrops, angelica,  yucca stalks,
meadow rue, thistles and lilies,
lychnis, astilbe,
telling the time in June.

      With those lines, the Yellow Springs poet Hepatica Sun puts out markers for the week ahead. And June time is full of makers each one pointing out a separate time and place of day. Quail whistling in the woods, pointing to tent caterpillars in the trees. Goslings leaving  the nest, telling you that mulberry season is forecasting pies.
    The first monarch butterfly marks May apples with fruit the size of a cherry, tells of honeysuckle flowers falling and cucumber beetles eating the cucumber vines.
    Fireflies light up the night, warning of chinch bugs hatching in the lawn, and powdery mildew growing on the garden phlox.
    Yucca plants flower as young grackles leave their nests, and nettles reach up to your chest, pointing to Japanese beetles attacking roses and ferns.
    Pie cherries ripen to tell you that painted turtles and box turtles are laying their eggs, and giant (but harmless) brown stag beetles prowl the grass.