‘I’m just going out to check the ewes,’
I said, but then I found
October dancing on the hill,
her robust fullness gowned
in scarlets, golds, and brassy browns,
seducing with her hat of blue,
her perfume heady, humming tunes,
giving nuts and apples too.

Pat Elliott
 

    Waxing throughout the week, the new Robin Migration Moon enters its second quarter at 4:04 a.m. on October 7. Rising in the middle of the day and setting in the evening, this crescent moon is overhead in the afternoon. Lunar position favors watching the Draconid Meteors on the 8th and 9th after midnight. Jupiter lies in the south at dark. Orion fills the east before dawn.

THE FOURTH WEEK OF EARLY FALL
    The landscape is collapsing through sunny days and drought into middle fall. At the Mill, a few bellflowers still bloom (they must have been broken off in the summer, grew back, blossomed now). Clearweed, zigzag goldenrod and pink smartweed are still strong. Chicory is still blue along the highways, climbing bindweed still blue in the alleys. A few jumpseeds are still jumping.
    Only the cut-over areas have wingstem, heal all, burdock, velvetleaf, jimsonweed, black-eyed Susans flowering. Most tall field goldenrod is dying from the ground up. Milkweed and thimbleplants are bursting. The New England asters, stonecrop and Jerusalem artichokes are seeding. Ironweed and horseweed heads puff up. Queen Anne’s lace grows tight and dark. Touch-me-nots have all faded, pods still popping.
    Robins cluck migration signals in the honeysuckles. Crows caw before sunrise. Starlings flock around the soybean fields. Long flocks of grackles pass over the village. Terns and meadow larks, yellow-rumped warblers and purple martins migrate through the township. The last cicadas sing through the warmer afternoons. Green frogs croak when showers threaten. Katydids call when the evenings are mild. Crickets sing one-note songs even in the cold.
    Almost all trees have some color change now. The ashes have reached full turn, and enough sweet gums, oaks, tulip trees, hickories, locusts and maples have joined in to bring the whole landscape close to the edge of middle fall. Pokeweed stems are red, blackberry purple. Enough leaves have come down to reveal most of the scarlet creepers. So many trees are bare: black walnut, buckeye, cottonwood, ironwood, box elder, poplar, wild cherry, and paw paw. (Walt Tuleke, who has promoted the paw paw tree throughout Yellow Springs and as far west as Seattle, says it was the best year for paw paws he has ever seen, the fruit plentiful and ripening almost a month later than usual.)