In the course of each of the four seasons, inevitably, if the good weather continues for a period of time, rain, wind or snow follow. One must always think of the changes in heaven and earth. In the same way, one must be prepared for changes in the mind of a person….

Miyamoto Musashi

EPHEMERIS FOR THE FIRST WEEK OF EARLY FALL
At 1:44 p.m. on September 18, the Hummingbird Flocking Moon becomes the new Jerusalem Artichoke Moon. Waxing throughout the week, the thin lunar crescent rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is overhead in the middle of the day, bringing full bloom to the tall artichokes, all the asters and the goldenrods. The dark moon brings the best chances for seeing one of the Piscid meteors in the southern sky, an hour or two after midnight.

Autumn equinox occurs at 5:18 p.m. (EDT) on September 22.

JOURNAL
There can never be enough scientists or humanists to gather the simple, quotidian facts of every existing thing, even though accurately understanding the world demands no less.
William Least Heat-Moon

Along the Little Miami River, nettle seeds are black and brittle. Walnuts cover the ground, their green hulls fragrant, Osage, acorns, hickory nuts, buckeyes down around them. The wetland mallows have ended their season, their great heads dark. The pods of the milkweed straining to open, wingstem and goosefoot bowing.
Smartweed at my feet, pink and white. The smell of river mud, bittersweet pollen, and hay from over on Clifton Road.

Maples are turning red, dogwoods blushing, the higher branches of the ashes and hackberries pale, Ruby’s redbud full of gold, amber streaking the lindens, ginkgoes, tulip trees, locusts, mulberries. Fields of thistles, down matted to their stems, poison ivy purple, sumacs purple, purple New England asters. Short’s asters, heath asters, heart-leafed asters, swamp bidens, beggarticks full bloom, chicory still open, late lobelias, orange berries of the honeysuckle heavy on their branches.

Wasps on the goldenrod, and skippers and honeybees working the stronecrops. Cabbage butterflies mating in the Joe Pye and the boneset, thin-bodied, blue-tailed dragonflies by the quiet water, a preying mantis making cases for its eggs in the beebalm. Whistling crickets before sunrise, cardinals at seven, geese at seven thirty, grackles in the midmorning trees and squirrels chattering, cicadas softer in the cool afternoon, crows in the trees toward evening, katydids chanting in the early night.