August 1st
The 213th Day of the Year

Take Stock in August,
Count your Days.
Measure the Harvest,
The Hours of Sunlight.

Celtus

Sunrise/set: 5:33/8:49 Day's Length: 14 hours 16 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/64 Average Temperature: 75
Record High: 96 - 1935 Record Low: 52 - 1895

Weather
Today is usually in the 80s, with a 15 percent chance for an afternoon in the 70s, and 20 percent for 90s. The sun shines on at least 85 percent of the days, and chance for rain is 25 percent. Cool lows in the 50s occur only 15 percent of the time.

The Week Ahead
The Dog Days usually continue this week of the year, the daily possibility of highs in the 80s and 90s remaining near July levels. However, August 3rd, 4th, and 5th are the last days of the summer on which there is a 40 percent chance of highs in the 90s, and chances for highs in the 80s are steady at around 50 percent. Cool days do occur 15 to 25 percent of the years, and afternoons only in the 60s are occasionally recorded between August 2nd and 11th. Morning lows are typically in the 60s, although one fourth of the nights carry temperatures in the middle 50s.

The August Outlook
Six thunderstorms usually occur in August. They are most likely to occur on the hot afternoons between the 1st and the 11th. Total precipitation is near three inches in Yellow Springs, a little less than in July.
The days with the most precipitation are usually August 4th, 5th, 10th, 11th, 18th, 19th, 21st, and 28th. The driest days in my weather history: August 9th, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 22nd.
Nights grow longer in August, one hour and nine minutes longer by the end of the month. The first week loses two minutes in a day; by the last week, the loss is up to three minutes every 24 hours. Even though the days shorten, the percentage of possible sunshine per day increases to near 80 percent, the highest of the Ohio year.
The eighth month typically brings ten completely sunny days and up to two weeks of partly cloudy weather. The brightest August days, those with better than an 80 percent chance for sun, are the 1st, 2nd, 8th, 9th, 12th, 13th, 25th, and 26th. Totally cloudy days are rare; the 18th, the 23rd and the 28th are the only days on which the chances for overcast conditions reach 50 percent.
Normal average temperatures decline from the mid 70s to the lower 70s all across the region. Highs fall from their peak of 85 at the rate of about one degree every week, reaching 81 by the first of September. Average lows drop from 64 to 60.
The August days most likely to bring milder temperatures (highs below 80 degrees) occur in the second half of the month: the 20th, 23rd, 24th, 29th, and 30th. The hottest days, those most likely to bring 90s or above, generally come at the beginning of the month. Adding to the warmth, August’s wind speed is the lowest of the year, and humidity is the highest, an average of about 80 percent after sundown. Chances for oppressive heat gradually fall from 35 percent between the 1st and the 4th down to 15 percent by the end of the month.

A Floating Sequence
For the Blooming of Wildflowers and Perennials
August 1 Boneset, Late-Season Hosta
August 2 Prickly Mallow, Giant Yellow Hyssop
August 3 Clearweed, Milk Purslane, Love Vine
August 4 Willow Herb
August 5 Japanese Knotweed
August 8 White Boneset
August 10 Three-Seeded Mercury
August 12 Tall Goldenrod
August 14 Rose Pink
August 17 Love Vine
August 23 Hog Peanut
August 24 Jerusalem Artichoke
August 29 Beggarticks
August 30 Bur Marigold

Estimated Pollen Count
On a scale of 0 - 700 grains per cubic meter: Most of the pollen in the air this month comes from ragweed.

August 1: 35 August 5: 40
August 10: 50 August 15: 85
August 20: 160 August 25: 200
August 30: 300

Estimated Mold Count
On a scale of 0 - 7,000 grains per cubic meter:

August 1: 4000 August 5: 4800
August 10: 6000 August 15: 4000
August 20: 4800 August 25: 5100
August 30: 5500

Summercount
Front 11: August 4th: This weather system sometimes provides an early break from the Dog Days.

Front 12: August 10th: This front can be one of the most shocking of the year, bringing an end to the Dog Days five years in ten.

Front 13: August 17th: This is the first front of the summer which can bring chances for frost at higher elevations and along the Canadian border.

Front 14: August 29th: This front brings the chance of light frost as far south as the Ohio Valley.

August Phenology
When honeysuckle berries ripen, and hickory nuts and black walnuts drop into the undergrowth, then dig your potatoes.
When you hear robins make their clucking migration calls, then make corrective lime and fertilizer applications for August and September seeding.
When green acorns fall to the sweet rocket growing back for next year’s flowers, then black walnut trees will have lost about a third of their leaves and hummingbirds, wood ducks, Baltimore orioles and purple martins start to disappear south.
When the violet Joe Pye weed flowers become gray like the thistledown, then peaches, processing tomatoes and peppers are almost all picked, and the fruit of the bittersweet ripens orange.
When watermelons are ripe and firefly season comes to a close, then cut the last of your oats and put in your fall peas.
When spiders start to increase their building of webs in the woodlot, then yellow jacket season to begin in the windfall apples and plums, and morning fogs increase in the lowlands.
When the first field corn is mature, then divide and transplant the lily-of-the-valley.
When cardinals stop singing before dawn, watch the soybean leaves yellowing in the fields and get ready to cut corn for silage.
When velvet leaf goes to seed in Midwestern fields, then frost time approaches for pastures in the Rocky Mountains.
When you see long flocks of blackbirds moving across the sky, then it’s time for plums to be the sweetest of the year.
After you pick the last of the elderberries, then scout the fields for late-season pests: second brood corn borers, second generation of bean leaf beetles, and rootworm beetles.
When the first wild grape is sweet enough to eat, then prepare the soil for the planting of winter grains.
When all the summer apples have been picked, then look for the first puffball mushroom of the year to swell in the cool, damp nights.
When you see more than one Judas maple tree in the woodlot, then hickory nutting season gets underway.
When red leaves appear on the Virginia creeper in Kentucky, then snow threatens gardens in central Canada.
When the last of the garden phlox die back, then ragweed time winds down and the year’s final tier of wildflowers is budding: beggarticks, bur marigolds, asters, zigzag goldenrod.
When the midseason hosta and the lilies are gone, summer stabilizes again, solid in the gold and purple coneflowers, the tall wingstem and ironweed, the rich opening of the ragweed, the green budding stalks of the goldenrod poised, their full season still ahead, reassuring, promising the long-lived asters in another few weeks.
When dogbane pods turn reddish brown in the fields, then wood nettle has gone to seed under the high canopy.
When elm trees start to turn, then watch for mallards flying south. Whip-poor-wills, cedar waxwings and catbirds follow.
When you find your first puffball mushroom (big and white like a lost soccer ball) in the woods, then mallards will be migrating and farmers will be preparing their fields for winter wheat.
When greenbrier berries are black, then prickly mallow will be blooming along the fencerows and almost all the oats will be cut.
When the last of the summer apples are picked, then the wood thrush will be moving south across the Ohio River.
When arrowhead blooms in the waterways, then pale Asian lady beetles have begun their late-summer migration.

The Seasons of August
Week One
The first week of August brings White Snakeroot, Boneset, Clearweed and Jumpseed Seasons. Ragweed Season spreads across the village, and the pollen count begins its slow climb from an average of 30 grains per cubic meter at the end of July to about 300 by the end of August. Blackberry Season and Grape Season has moved up from Kentucky as Black Walnut Leafdrop Season gathers momentum. Stonecrop Season starts in the gardens of Yellow Springs as Meadowlark Migration Season and Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Flocking Season get underway.

Week 2
High Katydid Season marks the slow decline of Dog Day Season this week of the year. Migration seasons intensify for wood ducks, Baltimore orioles and purple martins. This is the week of Cottonwood Yellowing Season and Joe Pye Seeding Season, the time of Three-Seeded Mercury Season and Great Blue Lobelia Season. It is the week that Spiderweb Weaving Season becomes more noticeable throughout the woods, spiders taking all the prey they can before cold settles in. Firefly Season moves to a close as Late Summer Monarch Butterfly and Swallowtail Butterfly and Imperial Moth Seasons swell. As Apple Windfall Season pulls windfall apples to the earth, Autumn Yellowjacket Season reaches Yellow Springs.

Week 3
The third week of August brings Judas Maple Time to the surrounding area. Complementing that maple season, Sumac, Poison Ivy and Virginia Creeper Reddening Seasons grow along the fencerows. In the woodlots, Wild Plum Season compounds the sweetness of Elderberry Season. Deep in the woods, Puffball Mushroom Season commences as the Whip-Poor-Will, Cedar Waxwing and Catbird Migration Seasons open. In South Glen, Goldenrod Season presages September as Ironweed Season and Wingstem Season continue to brighten the fields, and the height of Tall Bellflower Season softens the mood of the decaying undergrowth with stalks of powder blue.

Week 4
The last week of August brings the peak of Purple Pokeweed Berry Season in the alleyways, Beggartick Flowering Season in the garden, Bur Marigold Season in the wetlands. Burrs of the tick trefoil stick to your pants legs as Tick Trefoil Burr Season begins. Hickory Nutting Season spreads across the forest floor. Deep in the woods, the final days of this year’s wildflowers coincide with the first days of the Season of Second Spring, a season that lasts well past February. March’s purple deadnettle comes up in the garden, initiating its eight-month season of growth and flowering. The garlic mustard that will flower two Aprils from now sprouts in the rain. Next May’s sweet rockets and sweet Cicely grow back, and next July’s avens send up fresh basal leaves.

The Natural Calendar
Wild cherries are half ripe. Meadowlarks and plovers fly south. Honeysuckle berries ripen, and hickory nuts and black walnuts drop into the undergrowth. Arrowhead is in bloom along the shores of rivers and lakes.

Daybook
1982: Blackberries are ripe at South Glen. Clearweed is blooming in the woods. Common hops in flower in the north bushes. Great ragweed heading up. Horseweed identified, has probably been blooming a week or so.

1987: Sparrows chattering in the north bushes this morning, crows on the south end of the village, starlings in the west tree lot. No summer cardinal, no dove, no blue jay song.

1988: At 3:30 a.m., katydids suddenly went silent. They'd been singing since I woke up at 2:00. Crickets still loud.

1989: Japanese knotweed budding in the yard. To Wisconsin: Chicory opened in the sun at 7:45 a.m., (EDT), at the beginning of my trip, closed 3:20 p.m., Central Daylight Time, near Rockford, Illinois. Patches of brown parsnips all along the highway. Mullein and milkweed still full bloom. Much teasel brown, complete. Queen Anne's lace everywhere, black eyed Susans, trumpet vine, too. Most crown vetch, so strong in June through mid July, gone now. Some late moth mullein. Tall ragweed in bloom near Indianapolis, ironweed flowering there too. Sundrops, birdsfoot trefoil. Wild lettuce throughout. Near Wisconsin, a few June parsnips still in bloom, trefoil common here, white sweet clover, too.

1990: First blue dayflower opened today. Balloon flower still full.

1996: When I came back from Minnesota a week ago, the red phlox had just opened -- putting their flowering date around the 26thof July. Now the whites and reds are in full bloom. Day lilies continue to be open at different locations about town, and in the yard, too. Hosta leaves continue to disintegrate. It is the peak of all the coneflowers. Ironweed has finally budded. All the crops – from fruits to vegetables – in the whole country are weeks behind schedule from the cool summer. My garden tomatoes are still not ripe. No cardinals heard in the morning. The chatter of sparrows, sing-song of robins missing. One blue jay heard this morning at about 6:20. One yellow jacket seen, the first I've noticed.

1997: Smartweed still blooming today.

1998: The first white and yellow arrowhead flowers have opened in the pond, have been blooming no more than a day or two.

1999: First ironweed flowers this morning. Flax continues to bloom. Spiderwort has died back over the past two weeks, now completely gone. Heliopsis rusting, showy coneflowers peaking and turning to autumn. Only a few fireflies at night; the drought never let them really come out. But this morning at 5:00 (EST), the late summer crickets were singing, along with a chorus of robins and cardinals. Cutting back the garden this afternoon, I flushed a giant cecropia moth from its place in the weeds. It lumbered out into the sun, then settled into the weeds at the east end of the undergrowth.

2001: Last flowers on the last spike of the purple loosestrife. Several large cottonwoods completely yellow along the freeway.

2002: No birds at 4:25 a.m. (EST) Then cardinals were singing by 4:50. Jays joined at 5:00, then doves, then crows within just a few more minutes.

2003: Burdock just opening in the South Glen. Scattered walnut leaves yellow and fallen, stuck to the touch-me-nots and wood nettle. Spider webs common across the paths. Resurrection lilies blooming along Dayton Street. Three tiger swallowtails and one monarch seen in the garden. Jean reports seeing several monarchs crossing the road this afternoon.

2006: Grackles call in the alley this morning at about 8:00 a.m. (EST). A couple of robins, five or six starlings seen there too, but only the grackles were vocal. Yesterday starlings noticed on the high wires, not a big flock, but maybe a couple of dozen. Another monarch and tiger swallowtail today. The hummingbird has found the feeder Jean put out earlier in the month.

2007: Golden pollen fully emerged on the tall ragweed in the alley. Monarchs, tiger swallowtails, black swallowtails, fritillaries visit the garden. One giant swallowtail with its telltale yellow stripe came to the circle garden at noon. Robins and cardinals at about 5:00 (EST) this morning. A squirrel started whining about 7:00.

August 2nd
The 214th Day of the Year

I will love you in the thyme-leafed speedwell,
I will love you by the Ragweed Moon.

Hepatica Sun

Sunrise/set: 6:34/8:48 Day's Length: 14 hours 14 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/64 Average Temperature: 75
Record High: 98 - 1899 Record Low: 49 - 1965

Weather
Cool morning temperatures in the 50s occur today 25 percent of all the years, but afternoons in the 90s come 30 percent of the time, 80s sixty percent, and 70s just ten percent. The sun shines at least a little on nine out of ten August 2nds, but thunder showers pass through 35 percent of the time.

Natural Calendar
This is the first week of ragweed time, and the first week of late summer. Golden and purple coneflowers, and white, pink and violet phlox still dominate the gardens. Red trumpet vine still curls through the trellises. Mums appear in the dooryards. The red stonecrop pushes out. In the cool shade of the woods, and along the river, leafcup is the dominant flower. Along the lakeshores, orange dodder spreads across the tattered black raspberry bushes.

Daybook
1984: White cabbage moths still spiraling, mating near the barn-board fence. One female rested on a leaf of honeysuckle, and the male returned to her over and over, so light, in ethereal, erotic randori, in perfect balance with the air and with the other.

1987: South Glen: Swallowtails and monarchs all along the path, a great blue heron upstream. I had a brief encounter with a weasel, its coat so rich and blue-brown, almost ironweed-purple in the sun. Hickory nuts on the ground, acorns near full size. Plenty of wild blackberries for breakfast as I walked. Wild cherries half turned.

1989: Madison, Wisconsin: White snakeroot starting to bloom, like in Yellow Springs, but water cress, still flowering like late June in Ohio. Milkweed pods well formed, spurge full bloom, burdock full with some burs, a few white vervain, most white snakeroot budding with a few in bloom. Early bull thistles. Avens to burs, enchanter's nightshade with burs, agrimony late. Goldenrod in early bloom. Green berries on the elderberry. Deptford pink, gray headed coneflower, wild quinine, hoary vervain, monarda, cup plant (silphium perfoliatum), gay feather, wild lettuce, white sweet clover, naked sunflower (helianthus occidentalis), early ironweed, compass plant, rattlesnake master, bristly thistle, tall cinquefoil. Ragweed, eight feet tall, in bloom: its calendar is the same throughout the thousands of miles of my trips.

1992: Two goldfinches in the zinnias and cosmos today, yellow in the reds and purples.

1993: Late evening: A lone goose flies honking over the park, the first goose of late summer.

1996: The first katydid sang tonight in the yard. Resurrection lilies are in full bloom at scattered locations in town; ours are emerging but not flowering.

1998: Ironweed full early bloom along the freeway. Only one water lily open in the pond.

1999: At six this morning, total silence. Three water lilies opened today. But no resurrection lilies yet.

2000: Tonight at 9:00, no birds heading home, no swallows, no bats. Full cicada song. One bat and then the full katydids and crickets at 9:08, then the cicadas fade into the dark. An odd sharp whinny in the back trees at 9:10 like a cross between a squirrel and an owl and a pileated woodpecker; repeated maybe ten times, then silence.

2001: As I did tai chi this morning, a locust leaf fluttered to the ground. Later, I looked out the window: another leaf was coming down.

2002: Into South Glen: Spitbugs still hanging on the grasses. Tall bellflowers still open, the last teasel, wood nettles, and avens blooming, ironweed coming in, a few blackberries ripe – but small and bitter from the June and July drought. Spider webs across the paths. Buckeye leaves rusting and falling beside the black walnuts. Some hickory nuts down. The locust trees along Corey Street are brown from leafminers. Resurrection lilies full bloom in town, two budded in the south garden. First yellow jacket seen. Fireflies at 8:40 p.m.

2003: Three monarchs in the north garden all at once this morning. Tiger swallowtails appear consistently at the butterfly bush. Another monarch in the afternoon in the south garden.

2005: Another wave of 90-degree temperatures settles in; plants begin to droop by late morning. A total of only about two dozen lily blossoms remain on about a dozen plants. Albert, the green frog, still croaks from time to time – once this morning early, again at noon. Cicadas loud and strong from sunup until dark.

2006: Cardinals sang at 4:51 a.m. (EST). Doves joined in about half an hour later, continued off and on through the early morning. One tiger swallowtail lazily sipped impatiens and rose of Sharon at 8:00. Pairs of orange fold-wing skippers were playing in tight randori in the morning sun. A cardinal suddenly came out from the bushes, hovered for an instant and then gobbled one of the skippers down. In the alley, giant ragweed is getting pollen and the first burdock blooms have appeared. Wild blue chicory is lush, complementing the purple garden phlox in Mrs. Timberlake’s yard. In the yard, new black-eyed Susans create the dominant color. Leaves trickle to the undergrowth, one every few minutes.

2007: First ironweed flowers in the yard.

August 3rd
The 215th Day of the Year

Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;
And after summer evermore succeeds
Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold:
So cares and joys abound as seasons fleet.

William Shakespeare

Sunrise/set: 6:35/8:47 Day's Length: 14 hours 12 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/64 Average Temperature: 75
Record High: 100 - 1964 Record Low: 40 - 1965

Weather
Highs in the 90s come 40 percent of the time on this date, 80s fifty-five percent, with 70s only five percent. Skies are clear to partly cloudy eight years in a decade, with rain passing through one year in three. Most night lows are in the 60s; just 20 percent reach into the 50s.

Natural Calendar
Almost all of the corn should be silked by now, and a third of the crop could be in dough. Two thirds of the soybeans are flowering or setting pods. Oats and the second cut of alfalfa, running neck and neck, are ordinarily three-fourths harvested. Midwestern farmers are making corrective lime and fertilizer applications for August and September seeding.

Daybook
1984: To the Swinging Bridge in the North Glen: First boneset and white snakeroot seen blooming. Hobble bush done flowering, most mint complete. More red Virginia creeper leaves falling to the grass. Damselflies and spitbugs continue their activity. An ambush bug and a new flower, water hemlock, discovered. Some touch-me-not-pods are bursting. White vervain, tall bellflower and lopseed holding on. Sweet clover has gone to brittle seeds.

1985: South Glen: Osage fruit seems full grown now, the first fallen to the path. Small-flowered agrimony identified, and showy coneflower, and a very rare biennial guara. Wild cucumbers throughout. Hickory nuts common.

1988: Now two weeks after the rains, the tall coneflowers have started to come in. Joe Pye weed and monkey flower are in full bloom near the Swinging Bridge. Lizard's tail has turned into long, white seed heads. First oxeyes bloom, along with the ragweed. Large green seeds noticed on the waterleaf, hydrophyllum canadense. Purslane and speedwell now cover the garden. Great blue heron seen on the way home.

1989: To northern Minnesota: Spotted knapweed found north of Madison, Wisconsin, same stage as in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania thirty days before; Canadian thistle – which had gone to seed six weeks ago in Yellow Springs – was in full bloom near Eau Claire. Day lilies still fresh, and June's yellow and white sweet clover were still open in Minneapolis; and the plantings of crown vetch along the freeways were strong (gone in Yellow Springs). Some winter wheat was still in the fields. Some fields of oats were still being harvested. Northern goldenrod, ahead of the southern variety of Greene County, was in full bloom. And milkweed pods were half formed, just like in Glen Helen. Many other common flowers from Ohio north of the Twin Cities: sow thistles, St. John's wort, chicory, sundrops, great mullein, Joe Pye weed, bouncing bets, black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne's lace, bird's foot trefoil, parsnips, horseweed, common and great ragweed.

1992: A couple of weeks ago, I found a bumblebee motionless on its side in the middle of a red zinnia: yellow and black, soft, at rest in the flower at its peak. I wondered if he had been poisoned along his pollen rounds. I shook the flower lightly, but the bee didn't move. I left him for dead; but the next morning he was gone. Today I found another silent bumblebee in another red zinnia. This time, I was more persistent; and when I stroked his wings, he recovered, got up clumsily and buzzed away. He and the other, I presume, had only been sleeping in the sun, exhausted, or drugged with nectar, collapsed in this bright, benign bed, indifferent to enemies and duty.

1993: A cool evening, fireflies blinking in the grass, not one flying.

1996: Fireflies nearly gone. First blue Asiatic dayflower blooms along the north wall. Day lilies almost gone about town. Cabbage butterflies in groups of three or four today. Yellow swallowtail, blue swallowtail seen.

1997: Return from a trip to Canton about 175 northeast of Yellow Springs to see Jeni: first goldenrod opening near Bolivar. Very early sundrops, a few purple ironweeds, a few wingstems. Joe Pye weed common, waves of blue chicory and Queen Anne’s lace. A few blue dayflowers seen. People at the bed and breakfast said they had been out picking blackberries. Locusts along the highway browning from leaf miners. Yellow patches in the scrub cottonwoods.

1999: Full robin song in the front yard at nine this morning, loud singsong. This afternoon, Louis the cat caught a snake, which was in the process of eating an angleworm.

2000: The mallow holds surprisingly well at late bloom. A few red bergamot have blossomed out of time, the pond arrowhead now full (after its first blossoms in July died back). One last Oriental lily holds in the north garden, the orange tiger Turk’s cap. And the small stella d’oro lilies still bloom at the malls and along the south wall. August hostas, Sum and Substance, Royal Standard, starting to flower. The August Moon hostas are almost done. Fallen apples bothersome in the yard now. I keep stumbling over them.

2001: Deep sense of late summer now at South Glen: patches of red Virginia creeper, some buckeye trees almost completely bare, some wood nettle leaves turning white. Joe Pye weed going to seed. Apples are lying all about the yard. Resurrection lilies still at full bloom throughout town.

2002: Yellow jacket seen eating a ladybug.

2005: Cricket hunters now.

2006: Snout-nosed butterflies swarming into southern Texas by the billions. The news says that “conditions are ideal” in Mexico for their breeding. This is a high period for all types of butterflies in that region. Here at home, more monarchs and swallowtails seen in the yard. Skippers continue to play throughout the mornings. Resurrection lilies noticed in full bloom along Don’s fence. Coming back from Beavercreek, Jean and I saw a large flock of starlings feeding in a suburban lawn. The first major flocking of late summer?

2007: A pair of catbirds has moved into the yard this week, flying back and forth with nesting materials. Their cat-like call heard for the first time during breakfast. In the alley, euonymus is in full bloom, as are tall coneflowers and thin-leafed/small-flowered coneflowers. The first pokeweed berries noticed turning purple. Mateo’s black walnut tree is starting to turn, and other black walnut fruits along Limestone Street are losing their summer green, becoming dusky. Along the front sidewalk, jumpseed plants are open all the way. At home, four winter tomato seeds (Cobra variety) have sprouted. Lilies are down to half a dozen plants with one bloom, but the lush Rose of Sharon, the large-flowered hibiscus and the second bloom of roses fill giant holes in the waning summer. Monarchs and swallowtails continue to visit.

The backyard
overgrown with wild grape,
hollyhock, creeping charlie,
is home to a thousand
white butterflies this August….

Ann Filemyr

August 4th
The 216th Day of the Year

Repetition removes the distinction between immediate experience and memory. In the case of the seasons, for example, it blurs the line between one summer and the next. All summers become one summer. The observation of one flower during one year merges with those observations in the past and future. The years become one year, reflection and hope indistinguishable. Time loses its power. Change becomes layered, consciousness free.

Sunrise/set: 6:36/8:46 Day's Length: 14 hours 10 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/64 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 99 - 1887 Record Low: 48 - 1912

Weather
Continued hot and very humid most years. Highs reach the 90s forty-five percent of the time; there’s a 45 percent chance for 80s too, only ten percent for 70s. The likelihood of rain increases to 60 percent, the highest since the 3rd of July, and the second highest of the summer. Clouds block the sun all day three years in a decade. There is just a ten percent chance for a cool low below 60.

Natural Calendar
In the mornings, cardinals and doves still sing half an hour before dawn. Blue jays still care for their young, whining and flitting through the bushes. Bullfrogs still call in the local ponds. But by the end of the week, the tree line is turning ever so slightly, a hint of tan and yellow appearing in the black walnuts and cottonwoods.

Daybook
1983: To Grinnell Swamp: Great and common ragweed in bloom, avens with green seed burs, wood mint still in bloom, a few white snakeroot plants open, agrimony, leafcup, tall bell flower, daisy fleabane, germander, tall coneflower, wood nettle, moth mullein, sundrops in bloom. First jumpseed flowers found. May apples still hold their green fruit.

1984: At South Glen, sound of bees, a steady drone throughout my walk. First clearweed flower found. Goldenrod budding. Most ironweed still not open. A few wingstem blooming. All milkweed is done, only couple milkweed bugs noticed. Blackberries ripe, and wild grapes are purple. A few box elder trees are yellowing at the tips. Wood nettle and oxeye are still in full flower. Some St. John's wort left, one loosestrife. Geese fly over 6:30 p.m.

1986: Cardinals still sing in the early morning. Fireflies gone. No geese flying over yet.

1988: Cardinal wakes me up at 5:55 a.m.

1989: Northern Minnesota, John's farm outside of New York Mills: Wheat being harvested. Ragweed in bloom, and amaranth, black medic, bristly thistle, thimble plant, clotbur, yarrow, goosefoot, catmint, wild sage, white campion, burdock, goldenrod, sow thistle, meadow goat's beard, birdsfoot trefoil, purple vetch, Canadian thistle. Milkweed pods half formed. John says frost comes quickly at the end of August. Foliage is gone from the trees by the end of September. Spring comes suddenly toward the end of April, engulfs May.

1992: At Caesar Creek on a small stump protruding from the lake: monkey flower, cinquefoil, water horehound in full bloom. Plants on another stump included ragweed and small-flowered asters. Along the shore, tall coneflowers, oxeyes and Queen Anne's lace. At my fishing hole, the dodder was orange like it was last year, but the tree line was deep green, no sign of fall. This evening, geese flew over honking at 6:30 p.m.

1993: A little after sunrise: light rain, gray, hardly any birds at the feeders, no cardinals singing, no sparrows, no dove calls, no blue jays. Grackles gone from the back trees. When the sun came out a few hours later, the birds were back and noisy. Three yellow swallowtails in the yard today. Scent of late summer deepening, late haying, moist decay, pollen, apples.

1996: Cardinal sings off and on this morning, beginning near 6:30.

1999: Robin singsong, long and loud this morning like yesterday. At 8:00 a.m., the dogs across Dayton Street were barking and barking, and then the bullfrog joined in from the pond.

2001: First cardinal at 5:55 this morning, then more cardinals gradually joining in throughout the neighborhood for an hour or so. The full moon was golden, setting over Dayton, Venus and Jupiter close together in the east over Glen Helen. Blue jay bell call at 6:13, doves at 6:17, cardinals starting to feed in the old apple tree at 6:21. Jupiter disappeared into the sunlight by 6:30. Venus was finally gone at 6:45.

2002: Doves still calling in the mornings.

2004: Whistling crickets heard this morning at 5:00.

2005: Short walk along the Orton Trail with Jean this morning, almost nothing in bloom except one small-flowered St. John’s wort, the first white snakeroot, and a few late avens and leafcups. Ripe blackberries found, small and tart.

2006: Three tiger swallowtails in the Joe Pye weed this morning. Euonymus vines in the alley have green buds (they seem like fruit/berries, but they’re buds) and a few of the first green flowers. The lilies are down to six blooming plants, and just around a dozen total blossoms.

2007: Sparrow seen feeding a fledging. The younger bird was much larger than the adult, probably a cowbird dropped into the nest by its parent. A few purple berries on the panicled dogwood in the alley. Honeysuckle berries getting fatter in the yard.

We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

Ruba’iyat – Omar Khayyam Fitzgerald

August 5th
The 217th Day of the Year

In natural history, old events are new again on about the same day each year. Something that happened here on August 5th of 1934 or 1950 or 1982 or 1991 is what is happening today. Like rings around the core of a tree, the years circle around our center, bringing the same signs and lessons at every point of the sun’s descent to winter, creating stability as well as coherence, explicating, making sense of time.

Sunrise/set: 6:37/8:45 Day's Length: 14 hours 8 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/64 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 103 - 1918 Record Low: 45 - 1972

Weather
Today’s highs are shared equally between the 80s and 90s, thirty-five percent chances for each, with a 30 percent possibility for an afternoon in the 70s. Rain falls four years out of ten. Totally cloudy skies are likely one year in four. Cool nights in the 50s occur about 30 percent of the time.

Natural Calendar
Butterflies become more common this week of the year, another generation of cabbage moths, swallowtails, and skippers moving into Yellow Springs gardens. Sometimes giant imperial moths appear downtown. Tiny alypias, shiny black moths with white spots on their wings, may find their way indoors.

Daybook
1982: Queen Anne's lace and chicory still dominate the roadsides, with tall thistles, horseweed, wild lettuce, milkweed (most with pods now), teasel and mullein (both turning brown). Wingstem becoming prominent. Ragweed early full bloom. Crickets and katydids fill the night.

1983: Mullein and teasel are still in full bloom. Day lilies are gone, but trumpet creepers are still blooming, Joe Pye Weed is strong, and ironweed is just opening. Oxeyes and black-eyed Susans and other sunflowers and wingstem are also prominent. No pods seen on the milkweed yet. No trees turning except the honey locusts near Wilberforce. Common hops ready on the back hedge.

1984: First blue dayflower opens in the yard.

1985: A cool, cloudy day, high only in the low 70s, the first pivot to fall.

1986: Jacoby: No fish biting. The river is quiet, dry leaves drifting to the water. Finches and swallowtails all around me. Ragweed just getting pollen. Some wild cherries black, completely ripe. On the way back to the car, I came across a black walnut on the path; one seen on the ground in town just a couple days ago. Fall moving down one nut at a time.

1988: Puffball mushroom, 72 inches in diameter, reported found in the woods near Dayton, after a week of days in the 90s, humid. Puffball season: it’s almost fall.

1990: South to Georgia: Trees yellowing from Yellow Springs to the Gulf coast: sycamores, poplars, sweet gum, birch, cottonwood, linden, red bud. Locust leaves laced from skeletonizers. Scattered goldenrod throughout. Wild lettuce and horseweed dying at Jekyll Island, strong throughout most of the East.

1991: To Caesar Creek: The drought seems to have turned the leaves early. Sycamore, dogwood, poplar, cottonwood, buckeye show early fall tans and rusts that mix with late summer’s wildflower purple and gold. Long patches of red poison ivy and Virginia creeper near the dark water. Dodder in and across the wild raspberries, turning almost orange. Box elders and elms are paling. One catfish, nice size, at the new hole, 3:03 p.m. Cicadas loud. But they keep to their trees. The annual cicadas rarely get lost on the water. The red, periodic ones, are the passionate, reckless fliers. Yellow bullhead at 3:27. Few birds today, except for a catbird across the channel, a crow and a heron off in the distance. No blackbirds, flickers, or red-headed woodpeckers. Fewer insects. Carp wallowing in the shallows to my right, slurping as though it were still June. My line has bites every 20 minutes or so as though the fish were going back and forth across the area, sweeping it for food.

1992: Stonecrop starts to bloom.

1997: Another monarch butterfly in the yard.

1998: No water lilies on the pond this morning, the first time since they started in the spring. At the far end of High Street, the big-leafed sunflower has opened. Along the freeway, white teasel has replaced the violet teasel. In Cincinnati, Japanese anemone opens with its purple flower. Oak-leaf viburnum flowers have darkened. Now is the time for white-petaled viburnum. Full coneflower season continues. Red jumpseed found at the zoo. Cottonwoods in retreat, yellowing quickly.

1999: Crows, doves, cardinals at about six o’clock this morning. The frog still calls from the pond. Robin sing-songing by seven o’clock.

2000: North Glen with Mike: Great blue lobelia, jumpseed, yellow touch-me-nots (without any seed pods to pop), small-flowered agrimony, a few avens, white vervain, some early low goldenrod beginning, one enchanter’s nightshade. Indigo bunting seen, red-eyed vireo and a blue-billed cuckoo.

2001: I’m hearing crows again in the morning. Is that because I’m listening for them, or are they really starting to become active again, reforming into bands for the fall and winter?

2002: At 5:30 a.m., silence, then distant cardinals. At 6:00, prominent cardinals, doves, even a robin song. At 6:10, crows join in. By 6:30, the cicadas have started, and the birdsong diminishes.

2003: This evening, crickets and katydids were loud and strong for the first time all year.

2004: After the one monarch butterfly in late July, only swallowtails, two or three a day, noticed in the garden.

2005: Yellow walnut leaves fall on Dayton Street, yellow mulberry leaves into the back yard. Resurrection lilies full on Winter Street. Five different lily plants in bloom. Royal standard hosta budding. Gladiolas full in the village. Second blossom of the pink spirea holds. Yellow tiger swallowtail and spicebush swallowtail in aerial randori this afternoon. Greg called this evening: baby skunks were four-inches long.

2006: Rich blue chicory continues to bloom in Mateo’s lawn. Resurrection lilies found in bloom by the Korean lilac bush – I’d forgotten about planting them there. Fold-wing skippers continue their morning play. Monarchs and tiger swallowtails continue to visit the zinnias and Joe Pye.

August 6th
The 218th Day of the Year

Attracted by the charming objects that surround me, I look at them, observe them carefully, compare them, and eventually learn to classify them, and lo and behold, I am as much of a botanist as anyone needs to be….

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Sunrise/set: 5:38/7:43 Day's Length: 14 hours 5 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/64 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 101 - 1918 Record Low: 49 - 1994

Weather
Thirty percent chance for a high in the 90s today, 35 percent for 80s, thirty-five percent for 70s. Rain is likely one year in three. A nighttime temperature in the 40s is possible now for the first time since the first week of July.

Natural Calendar
The day's length, which shortened at the rate of only six minutes a week one month ago, now contracts more than a quarter of an hour in seven days. Robin calls increase, short clucking signals for migration. Starlings and warblers become more restless. Hummingbirds, wood ducks, Baltimore orioles and purple martins start to disappear south; their departure marks a quickening in the advent of early fall. Green acorns fall to the sweet rocket growing back among the budding asters. Black walnut foliage is thinning. Violet Joe Pye weed becomes gray like the thistle down. Fruit of the bittersweet ripens orange. Spicebush berries redden. Rose pinks and great blue lobelia color the waysides.

Daybook
1985: First boneset blooming at the frog pond near Grinnell Road. White snakeroot very early. First buds on the goldenrod. First yellow jacket seen.

1986: Only sporadic cardinal song today. No sparrows or robins. Grackles gone from the back trees.

1988: Mill Habitat: First white snakeroot. Jumpseed blooming, love vine gold now, covers the lizard's tail all along the river. A clump of showy coneflower, rudbeckia speciosa, is in full bloom by the dam.

1990: Jekyll Island, Georgia: Pennywort blooming, pokeweed berries half purple, half green, thick-leafed bindweed in bloom, varieties of trefoil with big, blue one-inch flowers, purslane, Virginia creepers, thorned greenbriar. Ragweed still not in bloom here.

1993: First bright blue dayflowers opened today. Through the village on my walks, a stability of purple coneflowers, violet mums, violet, white, and red phlox, golden coreopsis, showy coneflowers, tall coneflowers, bright zinnias and cosmos that will all last into September.

1997: This morning, the cardinals were loud at six o’clock, but no robin chorus. That chorus is gone for the year now, ending with the last ten days or so of July. This afternoon into South Glen: one black walnut on the path. Early ironweed and wingstem. Blackberries mostly red. Wood nettle still full. Daddy longlegs do not have red eggs attached to their legs now. Full bloom of the oxeye. Cool breeze all day, the August 10th cold front arriving four days early.

1998: A cicada emerged last night on the back screen door, his old skin left hanging.

1999: Out for a walk along the Little Miami River: Virgin’s bower, purple phlox, wingstem in bloom. In town, two resurrection lilies seen flowering. This afternoon, the first yellow jacket came to the fallen apples.

2002: At 5:40 a.m., only crickets heard, the whistling crickets and the chanting crickets. At 5:46, the first faint cardinals. Crows at 6:03, then doves almost immediately after. One jay call at 6:10.

2003: Five tiger swallowtails in the garden today. One black swallowtail was engaged in randori with them.

2005: Bud Marsh from Livermore Street called this afternoon to report at least half a dozen hummingbirds were swarming at his feeder. Although he remembered that the previous instance of this kind of end-of-summer clustering had taken place in September, a quick check of sources on the Internet suggests that this year Bud observed male hummingbirds as they were clustering for migration a month or so ahead of the females.
In northern states, the male swarming can take place as early as July. Since Bud also saw hummingbird flocks in September, it is likely that those birds were females with their young, gorging themselves with sugar before their flight south. September 30 is an average date for the last hummingbird to leave Yellow Springs.

2006: The first ironweed buds were open this morning.

2007: Yellow leaves from the white mulberry, locust, and hackberry trees fall sporadically now in the breeze. The leafdrop has begun.

August 7th
The 219th Day of the Year

The air sizzles with insect song. Crickets and grasshoppers warn and wook, rubbing their musical legs. They make the sound of beans rolling in a pan, tiny bells ringing on the ankles of dancers, fingers raked over the teeth of combs, waves rolling cobbles on the shore.

Scott Russell Sanders

Sunrise/set: 5:39/7:42 Day's Length: 14 hours 3 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/64 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 97 - 1918 Record Low: 46 - 1889

Weather
Highs in the 90s come 20 percent of the days, in the 80s sixty percent, in the 70s twenty percent. Rain falls one year out of five. Totally overcast conditions occur just 15 percent of the years. Cool lows in the 50s are recorded 15 percent of the years too.

Natural Calendar
Everbearing strawberries and watermelons are ripening; summer apples are half picked, and tobacco is topped on two-thirds of all the plots along the Ohio River. Local peaches are at their best. The first soybeans are turning, and most are setting pods. The harvest of winter wheat and oats is complete throughout the nation. Farmers are bringing in corn for silage, digging potatoes, picking tomatoes and finishing the second cut of alfalfa hay. This is the beginning of lawn seeding time, and the time for band seeding alfalfa on the farm. Smooth brome grass, orchard grass and timothy are also planted now.

Daybook
1983: Orton Path: The tree line is turning ever so slightly, a hint of tan and yellow in the black walnuts. Air heavy with the sweet, honey-like smell of corn pollen. Only a few teasel flowers, a few yarrow left, some daisy fleabane, a few white sweet clover. Field thistle, burdock, pokeweed, heal all, leaf cup, mullein, tall bellflower, false foxglove, lopseed, and wild lettuce are in full bloom. White snakeroot opening. A great blue heron flew overhead as I walked; it turned and banked over Clifton Gorge then disappeared into the forest. Blackberries full fruit now. First Asiatic dayflowers blooming in the yard.

1986: First geese of the year flew over at 6:14 a.m. (EST) To the Little Miami at 10:00, fishing with dough balls. A few bites, no fish. I stretched out on the bank of the river. I lay smelling the pollen from corn and sunflowers, watching swallowtails mating in the sycamore above me, tracking the wind whenever it marked the surface of the water, listening to the heavy pulse of cicada song, imagining the whole field at Middle Prairie full of golden coneflowers and purple ironweed.

1987: Cottonwood leaves yellowing, the tree line turning just a little.

1993: Red and violet phlox begin their decline, but the whites, which opened later, are in full bloom. Some patches of purple coneflowers are fading in the village. The ones in the east garden are still at their peak. Only a handful of fireflies seen tonight.

1996: August sedum, with its pale purple flowers, is open in town now. At the corner of Dayton-Yellow Springs Road and Highway 235, there is a three-foot smart weed in bloom -- or a pink-flowered dock - a volunteer this year brought in by the floods in April and May. It has long, straight pink flowers and large alternate leaves. Probably a Polygonum coccineum - swamp smartweed.

1997: Our generic midseason hostas are gone now, all but a few petals.

1998: Robin singsong at 5:10 a.m. (EST). Yellow yarrow fades now.

1999: The yard is full of butterflies today: cabbage moths and white-spotted skippers at the purple loosestrife (which has made a comeback in the last week), yellow swallowtails, black swallowtails. Blue-tailed darners at the pond. Geese flew over the house about seven this morning, first time I’ve heard them this year (and the same day and time as in 1986).

2000: The rate of change accelerates, as does the shift in my mood. To what extent am I susceptible to the new deeper colors of the leaves, the trickle of leaves into the undergrowth, to the aging of the garden, the multiplication of butterflies? I believe I am protected by my social context and my economic status and my work and family concerns, but those things insulate me less from the environment than from being honest with myself. The tangle of self-analysis itself is a sign of fall; I can’t answer the questions, can’t settle the restlessness, and so I daydream and mark time.

2001: Walk at 5:00 a.m. (EST), third quarter moon setting in the southwest, Jupiter a finger’s width away from Venus in the east, cardinals and robins singing, the last katydids of the night at 5:14, a screech owl at 5:17.

2002: The Royal Standard hosta began to bloom today.

2003: No birds this morning until cardinals started to sing at about 5:15 (EST). The last of the Turk’s cap lilies fell today.

2004: I noticed a small toad in the garden this afternoon. Have the snakes moved elsewhere? Far fewer snakes seen near the pond this summer.

2005: Four monarchs seen on the Joe Pye plant this afternoon. Tiger and spicebush swallowtails common. Only four lily plants still have one or more flowers.

2006: Cardinal called this morning at 4:59 a.m. (EST) and continued through dawn. Whistling crickets were singing from the time I got up until daylight. Only one dove heard about 5:20. Cicadas strong from sunup on. Lindy called from Antioch School: a wren’s nest with four blue eggs inside found in a bookshelf in her room. Only three day lilies left in bloom today on three separate plants. The Resurrection lilies, however, remain strong. Some bi-color-leafed hostas remain in full bloom. A flock of house sparrows has been feeding in the yard all afternoon, especially in the rose of Sharon, as though something has hatched and is providing a good meal for them. Monarchs and black swallowtails seen this afternoon. First Royal Standard hosta blossom today.

2007: Resurrection lilies, giant hibiscus, rose of Sharon, white-flowered August hostas (in Moya’s yard), showy coneflowers, great ragweed, tall coneflowers, purples coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, thin-leafed coneflowers, gray-headed coneflowers, Joe Pye weed are all in full bloom. Heliopsis continues bright, but the lower Heliopsis with bi-colored leaves is dying back now. Daisy fleabane continues to flower, has not let up since June.

August 8th
The 220th Day of the Year

No marigolds yet closed are;
No shadows great appear;
Nor doth the early shepherd's star
Shine like a spangle here.

Robert Herrick

Sunrise/set: 6:40/8:41 Day's Length: 14 hours 1 minute
Average High/Low: 84/64 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 99 - 1901 Record Low: 49 - 1889

Weather
Today’s highs are in the 90s thirty-five percent of all the years, in the 80s forty-five percent of the time, 70s the remainder of the years. The chance for rain is 20 percent. Sun dominates. Conditions may be unsettled, however, as a cool front typically passes through Ohio between today and the 11th. Chilly nights in the 40s come 15 percent of the years.

The Week Ahead
Weather statistics remain relatively stable for this second week of the month: 50 percent of the afternoons are in the 80s, 25 percent in the 90s and another 25 percent in the 70s. Rainfall is typically light, with the 9th, 12th, 13th, and 14th carrying just a ten to 15 percent chance for a shower. With the arrival of the August 10th cold front, however, the 10th and 11th have a 40 percent chance for precipitation as well as the slight possibility of a high only in the 60s for the first time since July 13th. The 10th through the 14th are more likely to bring evening lows below 60 degrees since June. And within the next seven days, lows reach into the 40s fifteen times more often than they do during the first week of August.

Natural Calendar
The end of fireflies, the occasional long and loud robin valediction song, the first yellow jackets in the windfall apples and plums, the appearance of red stonecrop, white snakeroot, and boneset flowers, the fading of cottonwoods, the occasional falling leaf, and a vague scent of fall combine now with all the other endings and beginnings to accelerate the year, building its momentum with an accumulation of more and more events.

Daybook
1984: Virgin’s bower and Japanese knotweed blooming along the railroad tracks near the Children’s Center, velvetleaf in the soybean fields.

1986: Color shift beginning along the tracks, milkweed yellows by the roadsides.

1988: Jacoby: Avens gone to burs, early white snakeroot, ragweed early full, oxeye full, spider webs across the way every few yards (peak of spider webs now), tall bellflower late, tall coneflower full, trumpet creeper holding, last of the white vervain, teasel dying back, fresh four-inch red thorns on the locust, rough bedstraw full, blue vervain seven feet high and full bloom, purple ironweed too.

1990: Home from Florida to loud city crickets and katydids that started up while I was gone.

1992: Long and steady cardinal song before dawn, then silence.

1993: At South Glen, the wood nettle is about half gone now, leaves tattered, seeds beginning to form. Blackberries are early full for picking. Most wingstem and ironweed still not fully developed.

1996: The pieces of late summer fall into place. The heat stays, but the rhythm has shifted, the tones have been altered, colors and sounds and scents all pointing to September. The katydids, which started to sing last week, are in full chorus after dark. The cicadas have finally all come out and fill the afternoons. The town geese have delayed their restless flights in the cool summer, but they should start moving back and forth across town any day. The smell of the wind is becoming more pungent, sweeter, sharper as the vegetation evolves.

1997: The last of the day lilies and Asiatic lilies.

1998: The Royal Standard hostas are in full bloom now in the yard and around town.

1999: Hummingbird still coming to the rose of Sharon at seven o’clock in the morning. Honeysuckle berries green, half size. Purple butterfly bush and loosestrife have both recovered from their July slump, are blooming strong. Several cottonwoods turning along the freeway, one Judas maple yellow-orange, a black walnut tree here in town.

2000: By this point in the year, almost all the notations in my natural history journal point toward fall. The notes and the actual changes accumulate until summer disappears, and a new season of new pieces emerges.

2001: Royal Standard hosta: one in full bloom, tall stems with large white trumpet flowers, one budded.

2003: No birds until 5:15 a.m. (EST). First blue Asiatic dayflower bloomed at the northwest corner of the house this morning.

2004: Greg called, said he saw a green cicada emerging today. I noticed a new green cicada on the back arbor the other day, didn’t realized it had just come out of its shell – which was a few feet away.
About town, several more Judas maples are turning.

2005: Cardinals began singing at 5:00 a.m. (EST), gathered momentum for half an hour, then quieted to sporadic through the day. Crescent-spot butterfly found on the showy coneflowers this afternoon; it remained there for at least an hour while I searched to match its markings in my butterfly book. Monarchs and tiger swallowtails and spicebush swallowtails continue abundant in the garden.

2006: Katydids sang until 4:40 a.m. (EST). First cardinal at 4:59. The black walnut tree in the school park has lost maybe a third of its leaves.

2007: The last lily in the yard has wilted. Some euonymus flowers turning to berries. Several branches on the southwest redbud seem to have died, foliate withered. One branch also on Janet’s redbud.

August 9th
The 221st Day of the Year

Think, bright Florella, when you see
The constant Changes of the Year
That nothing is from Ruin free,
And gayest Things must disappear.

Poor Richard's Almanack, 1739

Sunrise/set: 6:41/8:40 Day's Length: 13 hours 59 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/64 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 99 - 1894 Record Low: 49 - 1884

Weather
This is one of the sunniest of all the August days, with a 95 percent chance for clear to partly cloudy skies. Showers pass through the state 15 percent of the time. Hot temperatures in the 90s occur 25 percent of the afternoons, and 80s come on 50 percent, 70s on 20 percent. But, for the first time since June 29th, there is a five percent chance for an afternoon high only in the 60s.

Natural Calendar
August is the month of the Milky Way in the eastern night sky. Cygnus the swan can be found there, its formation a giant cross. Below it, Aquila spreads from its keystone, Altair, like a great eagle. Almost directly overhead, Vega of the constellation Lyra is the brightest star in the heavens. Hercules stands beside it. Early summer's corona borealis and huge Arcturus have moved to the west.
The day’s length shortens more quickly as August progresses. At solstice, the Yellow Springs night was less than nine hours long. By today, after six weeks of middle summer, the night has grown to ten hours. Now, it takes a little more than three weeks to grow by another hour.

Daybook
1982: First maple leaves yellow in Goes Station three miles south of town.

1986: Geese flew over at 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. The first patch of yellow appeared on the big maple in the yard. Tree of heaven fading. Clearweed noticed blooming. A few fireflies seen tonight.

1988: Fireflies, delayed by the drought, have actually increased tonight over a month ago.

1993: The last day lily opened this morning. Blue vervain on the Miller’s land was just starting its climb to autumn.

1996: Cottonwoods becoming pale yellow at a number of locations in the area. At the mill habitat, black walnut, sumac, wild grape, sycamore, elm, box elder, and redbud are also turning yellow along the river. One Virginia creeper on a fallen log was red. This morning, I saw a shower of yellow leaves fall into the garden, box elders. Coming home from downtown, we watched the wren in the front maple scolding Jerome the cat.

1998: The maple in front of our house has started to turn now, one of the earliest of the local Judas trees. Many cottonwoods are fading quickly. Along the highways, sundrops, iron weed, white boneset, wingstem are in full bloom. Katydids started at 9:02 p.m. along Jacoby road as Jean and I were walking back from the river.

1999: Brief robin song this morning around nine o’clock, for just a minute or so, then silence. At 10:00 a.m., a huge gray toad appeared at the pond, skin hanging around his flanks as though he had just lost half his weight.

2000: Crickets when I got up this morning: a single shrill call, unwavering. Cardinal at 6:11, several of them sang until almost 7:00. Cloudy, humid and windless morning. Pink and white phlox, heliopsis declining. Mallow almost all gone. Purple loosestrife just about done. Showy coneflowers are in the middle of their season, all in bloom, none fading. When the sky grew dark and a storm moved in, a blue jay in the back yard gave warning with its bell call, maybe a dozen cries before the wind struck.

2001: Cardinal at 6:09 a.m., crows at 6:21, blue jay then a squirrel at 6:25. A warm quiet morning, moon three quarters full, predawn sky dusky blue, Jupiter starting to move up and away from Venus in the east, ending conjunction.

2005: Albert, the green frog, croaked once this morning, letting us know he was still here. His calls have become much less frequent as the summer deepens.

2006: Katydids had become silent when I got up this morning at about one (EST). No sound either at about 3:30 or at 4:30. A few isolated “katy-dids” just before a cardinal sang at 4:56. Skunk odor drifting over from Stafford Street about 5:30. In the alley, lilac seeds elongating. All of Mrs. Timberlake’s phlox and lilies are gone. Jean and I sat on the porch about 8:15, the weather cloudy and cool. Male and female hummingbirds came to the feeder, but no butterflies in the yard. No cicadas because of the clouds and temperature, only a few cardinal calls. Only one lily is left blooming in the yard, a red-orange. In the pond, arrowhead has started to bloom.

2007: Robins strong this morning near 5:00 a.m. (EST). The cardinals sang a few times, and I heard one crow about 5:30, but no early doves.

August 10th
The 222nd Day of the Year

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunrise/set: 6:42/8:38 Day's Length: 13 hours 56 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/64 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 99 - 1900 Record Low: 49 - 1972

Weather
Today is one of the most decisive days in the decline of late summer. The chances for 90 degree temperatures, which have remained fairly steady between 30 and 45 percent since the beginning of July, abruptly fall to between 15 and 20 percent. Completely cloudy conditions are seen 30 percent of the years; chances for highs in the cool 70s are 25 percent, and chances for rain increase to 40 percent. Average temperatures have come down just one degree since July 28th, the date when the stability of middle summer began to deteriorate. Beginning today, averages drop a degree and a half per week until September 10th, when they decline one degree every three days into January.

Natural Calendar
Once the mid-season hosta and the lilies are gone, summer seems to stabilize again, solid in the rose of Sharon, the gold rudbeckia and the purple coneflowers, the tall wingstem and ironweed, the rich opening of ragweed, the green budding stalks of the field goldenrod poised, their season ahead, reassuring, promising long-lived asters and mums in another couple of weeks. Winter will never come.
Hummingbird moths still come to the impatiens. Touch-me-nots are still full bloom, tall bell flowers strong and blue, burdock holds beside the oxeye, bouncing bets, and new six-petalled wild cucumbers, the yellow and the blue flowered wild lettuce, bull thistle, virgin's bower, tall nettle, prickly mallow, small woodland sunflower, soft velvet leaf, sundrops, and heal all.
Along the river, bur marigolds are budding, zig-zag goldenrod, and broad-leafed swamp goldenrod. Water horehound, willow herb, and swamp milkweed are still open, still a little wood mint. Late summer's jumpseeds aren't ready to jump yet. Damselflies still hunt by the water. Cabbage moths still mate.

Daybook
1984: Early morning: A huge imperial moth on the outside wall of the Earth Rose store downtown. On the road east, goldenrod early full bloom from a few miles out of Columbus, but none behind in Yellow Springs. Through Pennsylvania, the same roadside flowers as Greene County: sundrops, Queen Anne’s lace, chicory, Joe Pye, ironweed, wingstem full bloom.

1985: Outer Banks, North Carolina: I sat beside the pennywort and fingered its seeds, stroked its round leaves. I walked through the sea oats to the top of the dunes and looked out at the waves. Ghost crabs scavenged in the shells and debris of the beach. The sky was so clear and blue. The sun and the wind pushed together on my back with a firm, hot pressure.

1986: Cardinals even quieter now. Black walnut trees losing their leaves. Locusts browning at Wilberforce. Poplars shifting color.

1989: The morning is quiet, only doves calling in the back woods, and a wren in the rose of Sharon north of the garden. Five or six apples fell from the tree in the past hour, muffled, uneven strokes of late summer’s pendulum.

1991: Patches of red Virginia creeper, orange dodder growing across the wild raspberries. Yellow jackets drawn to the fallen apples this week, lilies and trumpet creepers declining, fireflies almost gone, new green acorns on the path, just before katydids, the first flocks of geese fly over town, blackberries in at South Glen, bittersweet, heavy air, the scent of fall.

1996: Golden and purple coneflowers, and red, pink and violet phlox dominate the gardens of Yellow Springs now. A clavate tortoise beetle found on one of the tomato plants today, a small, odd brown beetle truly similar in appearance to a tortoise. When I was paging through the insect identification book, the beetle got away from me, and I lost him in the grass. I looked all over the tomatoes and weeds to see if I could find another, but no luck.
This evening around 6:30, I was eating downtown with Jean; to the south, near Glen Helen, the first geese of August flew over calling.

1998: Robin singsong about 6:15 this morning, crows about 6:30, cardinals near 7:00.

1999: Cardinals singing out the back door at 6:15 this morning.

2000: Two lily blooms left. The yard silent at 7:25 this morning except for a blue jay in the honeysuckles. Tonight, with the moon almost full over the south garden, the soft descending whinny of a screech owl in the back trees. The bird called for maybe three or four minutes, then ceded to katydids.

2001: Yellow yarrow cut back today. Phlox deteriorating quickly in the heat, victim of powdery mildew, the rain, and old age. Arrowhead bloomed overnight in the pond.

2002: A cool morning in the 50s, dew on the grass, the scent of apples and old leaves in the air.

2005: Heat wave continues, 15-plus days over 90 so far this summer. Lilies are down to only three blossoms today. Along the roads, cottonwoods are developing yellow leaves, locusts have patches of brown, some silver olive shrubs show yellow. Webworms, cut last week from the apple tree, have reappeared.

2006: After a cooling, light rain, the katydids refused to sing last night. This morning, fog covers the village. In the alley, Mateo’s black walnut has lost about half its leaves. Euonymus full bloom, tall coneflowers full, but the first blossom has lost its petals. Sparrows continue to move in small flocks through the undergrowth.

August 11th
The 223rd Day of the Year

Each part of the process of awareness enhances the sense of the monk’s present. The impeccable peace of that awareness and that present can be found in observing the passage of events of natural history. While we watch those events flow in front of us, we search for perfection in their passage. We listen to the spaces between the sounds of the birds and insects, watch the spaces between seasonal corners, and then between our feelings and our dreams.

Eliades Quintana

Sunrise/set: 6:43/8:37 Day's Length: 13 hours 54 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/63 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 98 - 1900 Record Low: 48 - 1890

Weather
There is a 50 percent chance for rain today, but the sun comes out seven years in ten. Most afternoons are in the 80s, but there is a 20 percent chance for 90s, fifteen percent for 70s, and ten percent for a high only in the 60s. Evenings cool into the 50s half of the years. Today is the traditional last date for the “Dog Days” in most almanacs.

Natural Calendar
This is the time that all the spiders in the woods weave their final webs. The katydids, which started to sing last week, now chant through the night. Cicadas fill the afternoons. Along the freeway, beds of white boneset come into bloom beside June’s blue chicory and silver Queen Anne’s lace. Orange bittersweet berries are mature and ready to pick.

Daybook
1982: Day lilies gone now.

1983: Maple along Dayton Street pale yellow. Some poplar leaves bright yellow. The smell of the wind is changing now, becoming more pungent, sweeter, sharper.

1986: Buckeyes hanging heavy on the branches, and leaves rusty around the edges. Robins clucking, Joe Pye weed fading, lopseed and panicled tick trefoil late bloom, early white snakeroot, red leaves of Virginia creeper and some sumac, green acorns on the path, first great blue lobelia found, skunk cabbage decayed, and the swamp littered with its stalks. First goldenrod discovered blooming at High Prairie. Asiatic bittersweet berries are yellow gold, along the fence: I broke off a branch of them, put it in my notebook; the hulls were open by morning. Geese flew over this evening at 8:02 p.m.

1988: Cardinals still singing all day. Did the drought delay part of their cycle?

1991: Cardinals, doves, flicker, robins, grackles loud in the early morning. Geese flew over at 9:41 a.m.

1993: First autumn fog this morning all the way south into Xenia. The very last day lily in the yard is blooming today; some gardens in the village have a few more, and it may be another week before the very last domestic day lily is gone. Two alypia moths found today, one at home, one eight miles away near my office. This is the first time I’ve noticed these small black creatures with their pale spotted wings. I feel like I've stumbled onto a secret,.

1996: Cloudy and cool today, the August 10th cold front settling in. A cardinal sang from early morning on, debunking all my notes on quiet August birds. The first raspberries are coming in today in our bedraggled berry patch.

1997: First Judas maple seen along Dayton Street yesterday, cottonwoods, black walnuts, locusts yellowing in patches about town too just as the first pink stonecrop sedum blooms at the corner of High Street and Dayton Street.

1999: Every lily is gone now. Ten cabbage moths at the loosestrife. A new brood?

2000: Natural history can be a litany of turning points in the progress of the year, and the motion of the earth around the sun produces more such points than I ever imagined. Each day brings out more turns and corners in the apparently straight, uniform field of the season. Like Quintana’s monk, I can rest momentarily, find the elusive present in the color and sound of the spaces between those corners.

2004: The first cardinal in the neighborhood sang at exactly 6:10 this morning. Doves came in at 6:25. The crescent moon was high in the east, a palm’s width above Venus.

2005: The worst storm since August 27, 2003 came in this afternoon with blinding, horizontal rain, thunder and lightning. A great branch from the white mulberry in back came down, bringing half of the remaining branches of the tallest locust. Our redbuds and one hydrangea damaged.

2007: Phlox have dwindled to maybe a fifth of their full bloom, and a rapid decline of all July blossoms. Japanese beetles have returned to the roses, destroyed the tea roses overnight, left the bush roses alone. Purple coneflowers declining, as yellow coneflowers become the staple of village gardens. Bi-color-leafed hydrangeas continue to flower along the north wall garden. White boneset fully budded. Arrowhead is in full bloom along the west edge of the pond. No sign of flowers on the virgin’s bower here or along Elm Street.

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

The Diamond Sutra

August 12th
The 224th Day of the Year

The earth is good, and the changing seasons are a joy.

Harlan Hubbard

Sunrise/set: 6:43/8:36 Day's Length: 13 hours 53 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/63 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 99 - 1900 Record Low: 46 - 1889

Weather
Today, the 13th and the 14th are usually sunny and dry, with a 15 percent chance of highs in the 90s, sixty percent chance for 80s, and 25 percent chance for 70s. Lows reach into the 50s half of the years, and into the 40s ten percent.

Natural Calendar
In the woods and pastures, wild oxeye, small-flowered agrimony, tall bellflower, white snakeroot, sundrops, heal-all, wild cucumber, jumpseed, tall coneflower, clearweed, touch-me-not, and maybe even the first goldenrod are flowering. Greenbriar berries darken.

Daybook
1982: Got up to see the Perseid meteors at 5:00 a.m. Only three seen. Geese flew over the house just past dawn. I was restless all day, wanting to put things in place. Walked out to Middle Prairie, took stock of what was there, what was changing.

1983: To Richmond, Virginia: From Yellow Springs through the mountains, the wildflowers remained stable: Queen Anne's lace, chicory, goldenrod, Joe Pye weed, sundrops, bull thistles, mustard, black-eyed Susans, wingstem, mullein, and sweet goldenrod. Hyssop (eupatorium hyssopifolium) identified in bloom at the campsite.

1984: Williamsburg, Virginia: The jumpseed blooming stage here is the same as in Yellow Springs. Asters still not open here.

1985: On the way to Cedarville, I saw the first tall goldenrod turning. The first yellow jacket was at the fallen apples in the back yard. Tonight, katydids started singing at exactly 9:01 p.m.

1986: Geese fly over the house at 9:47 a.m. Color shift beginning in the tree line on the way to Wilberforce.

1990: In the south garden, the latest zinnias are finally opening. Mums are blooming. Showy coneflowers at their peak. Mallow almost gone. Yarrow weakening, tiger lily foliage is yellowing. Crickets sing in the morning now, maybe a new species recently born. My fall lettuce has sprouted overnight, winter zinnias and tomatoes for the greenhouse too.
At South Glen: Most of the sycamore bark has fallen now. Japanese beetles continuing to mate, swarming on the sundrops. Agrimony, tall bell flower, wingstem, Queen Anne's lace, ironweed, wild cucumber, showy coneflowers all flowering. Some bouncing bets are left, some old mint, wood nettle past its prime. Canadian thistle down, gray and matted, still hangs to its plants. Robins calling steadily, almost drowned out by the crickets and cicadas.

1993: I woke up at five this morning, listened to the katydids chanting. They stopped at about twenty minutes to six. No cardinals heard at all today, but they come steadily to the bird feeder.

1995: A cardinal sang just a little this morning, then he was quiet. Apples by the back door tree have almost all fallen. Crab apples turning at the park, some of the foliage tattered or eaten. The smell of the air has changed – it changed toward the end of July. August is the beginning of autumn like late winter is the beginning of spring. Like in late February and March, before any of the obvious signs have developed, I know winter is broken. Now by the first of August, I know summer is broken. The heat stays, but the rhythm has changed; all the tones have changed -- colors and sounds and scents all pointing to fall.

1997: Most of the resurrection lilies in the south garden are done by now, but they are in full bloom in the rest of Yellow Springs.

1998: Two -day vacation up to Lake Erie, bright large-flowered sow thistles all the way, purple ironweed, yellow wingstem, Queen Anne’s lace common. No goldenrod open until we got close to the lake. Then, all across the northern edge of the state, the goldenrod remained blossoming. At the Crane Creek Park, the wetlands were full of purple loosestrife and the great pink water mallow. Complementing the loosestrife, were the full heads of the blue vervain. Monkey flowers here and there, an occasional bouncing bet. In one backwater, dozens of giant pale yellow water lilies, probably the American lotus in full flower.

1999: This afternoon a dozen cabbage moths on the loosestrife.

2001: Screech owl heard at dusk, low whinny. Geese fly over silently after sunset. Katydids and crickets strident.

2005: Trees down all over town from yesterday’s storm. Bob has a tree branch through his roof. Someone else, Dee said, had a branch come right into her bedroom. At the school, a large maple is down. Across from the church, the ground is covered with black walnuts. In the back yard, the first ironweed blossom opened in the middle of all the chaos of fallen trees. By the pond, the Royal Standard hosta came into bloom.

August 13th
The 225th Day of the Year

There is still time. The colors and sounds of Late Summer
promise everything.

Alonso Byrd

Sunrise/set: 6:44/8:35 Day's Length: 13 hours 51 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/63 Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 98 - 1936 Record Low: 44 - 1964

Weather
Temperatures are in the 90s twenty-five percent of the days, in the 80s forty-five percent, in the 70s twenty percent, and in the 60s ten percent. Lows fall into the 50s forty percent of the nights, and into the 40s fifteen percent. Rain comes only one day in a decade, and skies are clear to mostly sunny nine days out of ten.

Natural Calendar
Watermelon, green pepper, and everbearing strawberry harvests peak in the lower Midwest. The bulk of Ohio tomatoes finally ripen this week, and farmer’s markets are carrying everything from muskmelons to garlic.

Daybook
1982: Walk along the railroad tracks and back through the woods: Queen Anne’s lace, chicory, black-eyed Susans, burdock, wingstem, sundrops, trumpet creeper all still full bloom. Joe Pye weed growing old. One Asiatic dayflower seen. Flowering spurge and jumpseed first identified. Thimbleweed thimbles are prominent, avens mostly gone to burs. A few white scattered vervains, and meadowgoatsbeard.

1983: Richmond, Virginia to Manteo, North Carolina: Roadsides dominated almost exclusively by horseweed.

1985: The smaller maple in the yard has started to turn color, and is even losing a few leaves. One other Judas maple seen in town. Many trees, especially catalpas, are weathering, paling. Fireflies completely gone now.

1986: Butterflies everywhere this afternoon. Blackbirds cackling in the trees around the yard. Tonight, I stood outside the back door and listened to the crickets dialoguing with the cicadas: first cricket chant, then cicada chant.

1988: First major morning fog. Japanese knotweed budding in the yard. Boneset still not blooming at the lower Grinnell Swamp. Spicebush berries still are green. Cardinal still singing off and on through the day. Doves and crows still prominent in the mornings. Cicadas begin by 9:00 a.m., continue for about twelve hours until the katydids take over.

1989: Wild cucumber, echinocystis lobata, found in full bloom along the river in South Glen. A few fireflies left. Katydids began at 9:01 p.m. tonight.

1993: Doves still calling this morning. Balloon flowers holding on, after I’d given up on them. Tall sunflowers on the corner of High and Limestone are all in bloom now.

1996: Lady slippers in the south garden have been past their prime for a week or so now, their pods breaking easily, shooting their seeds out onto the ground. Beside them, the tall pink asters have finally come into their own, are now in full bloom like tall bright mums. Along Clifton Road, the goldenrod is late this year, hasn't even begun to turn.

1997: Fishing with John at Caesar Creek: Dozens of carp feeding in the shallows, much of their golden bodies visible above the water line. Great blue herons feeding with them. John caught a huge blue catfish late in the afternoon. It was rainy and cloudy most of the day; then when we were trying to get one more catfish at Cedar Hole, the wind shifted, and the cottonwood leaves started to rattle, the humidity fell, and the first breath of a cool front came across the lake.

1998: Headlands Park (along Lake Erie) to Yellow Springs: There are a few Judas maples along the lake. Cottonwoods are turning in the north, only a little ahead of home. Throughout the state, the season or trees and crops is still full late summer, the predominant color forest green. The landscape is covered with blue chicory, silver queen Anne’s lace, purple ironweed and field thistles, yellow wingstem and sow thistle.

1999: The hummingbird was back this morning a few minutes after seven. Phlox almost gone in the yard. Biennial gaura found in late bloom on the path north toward Springfield.

2001: First cardinal in the dark: 5:56 a.m., crickets still calling. Then blue jays at 6:23, crows at 6:25, crickets becoming silent. Boisterous bird song for maybe an hour, crows louder in the morning than I’ve heard them all summer. Then by 7:15, the sun well up over the horizon, the excitement tapers off. The rest of the day belongs to cicadas.

2002: An old black swallowtail, wings tattered, was resting in the west garden this afternoon, allowed me to come right up to it. Several other swallowtails visited the yard today looking for zinnias. Only two fireflies seen tonight.

2005: Whistling crickets when I got up this morning at 4:55 (EST). Sing-song crickets came in at 5:10, cardinals at 5:15, dove by 5:20, robin peeping at 5:25 – and a three-noted call, hollow, almost ghostly, but like a bell call, too. Geese at 5:55. Six chickadees hunted for insects in the old apple tree at 3:00 p.m.

August 14th
The 226th Day of the Year

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.... In August live on berries.... Be blown by all the winds.... Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn. Drink of each season's influence as a vial, a true panacea of all remedies mixed for your special use.

Henry David Thoreau

Sunrise/set: 6:45/8:33 Day's Length: 13 hours 48 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/63 Average Temperature: 73
Record High: 95 - 1965 Record Low: 44-1964

Weather
Chances for highs in the 90s are 15 percent, for 80s fifty-five percent, for 70s thirty percent. Precipitation is uncommon: rain falls only one year in ten on this date, and the sun almost always shines. Chances for lows in the cool 50s are 40 percent.

Natural Calendar
Morning fogs are thickening as the night air cools more often into the 50s. Crickets, cicadas and katydids become more insistent as late summer deepens. Grackle activity increases while cardinal song becomes fainter. The early morning robins are silent. Whip-poor-wills, cedar waxwings, and catbirds follow the signs toward the Gulf of Mexico.

Daybook
1984: At Coquina Beach, Outer Banks, N.C.: Many plants at similar stages to those in Yellow Springs: red berries on the pokeweed; wild lettuce, ragweed, horseweed, bindweed, primrose, smartweed in full bloom. Other species identified which I have not found in Ohio: marsh mallow, sea oats, white-top sedge, horsemint, maritime ground cherry, buttonweed, trailing wild bean, beach evening primrose, pennywort all in bloom.

1985: No cardinals before dawn for days now.

1986: Cardinals woke me up at 5:10 this morning; they continued off an on until around noon. Geese flew over at 8:30 a.m., and I heard them again faintly in the evening. Three-seeded mercury blooming in the garden.

1989: Hummingbird moths still come to the impatiens. Dogbane pods at South Glen are up to ten inches long now, turning red. Last germander at Middle Prairie. Wood nettle mostly gone to seed. Lots of buckeye leaves are brown, many black walnut trees are weathering, yellowing. Patches of red in the sumac. Touch-me-not still full bloom. Tall nettle failing. Mint at the end of its cycle, teasel complete, tall bellflower still full, burdock full and late, wingstem early full and seven or eight feet tall, oxeye, tall coneflowers, early ironweed, late bouncing bets, fat patches of showy coneflowers, wild cucumbers full bloom, small flowered agrimony gone to seed, some poison ivy red. Cardinal singing almost exactly at sundown. Herons circling above the fog which is forming below me in the hollows.

1992: The garden holds steady after the lilies are gone. Phlox, zinnias, cosmos, coreopsis, showy coneflowers, purple coneflowers, an occasional balloon flower, snapdragons, mums growing up around them. The flicker still sings in the back trees, but cardinals have been quiet for about a week.

1993: Once the hosta and the lilies are gone, Summer stabilizes again, solid in the gold and purple coneflowers, the tall wingstem and ironweed, the rich opening of the ragweed, the green budding stalks of the goldenrod poised, their full season still ahead, reassuring, promising the long-lived asters in another few weeks.

1996: Ever since the 8th, the weather has been cool. The fogs these past two mornings have been heavy, the air wet and cold, the dews thick. The cottonwoods seem to turn more each day. Fall seems to be here already, this late summer too prophetic, too dramatic. First monarch seen in the garden today.

1997: Fishing with John along the river: Two carp and a mud turtle caught on night crawlers. At home, the purple loosestrife completes its cycle in the pond and in the north garden. The last resurrection lily fades here, still strong in the village.

1998: Jean cut back the purple loosestrife in the pond today, all but a few fragments of flowers gone (the opposite of its full bloom along Lake Erie). Wren eggs discovered in the pitcher plant on the front porch.

1999: One resurrection lily finally bloomed in the south garden, but throughout town, they have been in full bloom for a while. The frog is quiet in this cool wet day, insects hiding. Cardinals at 6:15 a.m. Hummingbird at 7:15 a.m.

2000: August hosta are in full bloom here and throughout town. Two cut-over spiderworts blossoming in the south garden. Arrowhead full in the pond, water plantain gone for a while now, collapsed by the side of the fountain. Some fallen leaves along the bike trail. Dry leaves from the front maple were lying on the sidewalk and the street this morning. Preying mantis found in the garden yesterday. Barbara Preis’s mantis has come back this year again, the third or fourth year at least. So it’s possible that the mantis I came across was a descendent of the mantis I found there some years ago.

2001: At 5:50 a.m. (EDT), only crickets. At 5:56 a.m. one cardinal, then silence until 6:14 when cardinals called throughout the neighborhood for about 15 minutes, but just off and on. At 6:21 a blue jay, 6:25 a few crows, then silence. A wren at 6:45, a few crows in the distance at 7:10, then it was daylight and quiet.

2004: At Saugatuck in Michigan: Two days of clear skies and cool winds. The habitat here still shows orange day lilies and turban lilies, making it about two weeks behind Yellow Springs. Purple loosestrife lines the highways, thick and rich. Ladybugs seemed to be migrating along the beach, getting caught in the low waves and the sticky sand. Cardinal flower, boneset, heal all, St. John’s wort, white campion, purple vetch, wild mint (menta arvensis), hawkweed, late hoary alyssum (berteroa incana), horse mint, soapwort, knapweed, Canadian goldenrod found. Arrow wood viburnum, its berries dark purple, identified at a northern rest area. Only a few butterflies. Five deer seen in the woods of pine, spruce, ash, red oak.

2005: Spicebush swallowtails and monarchs come to the garden every day. Sometimes tiger swallowtails and giant swallowtails, too.

August 15th
The 227th Day of the Year

Nature has, for the most part, lost her delicate tints in August. She is tanned, hirsute, freckled, like one long exposed to the sun. Her touch is strong and vivid. Mass and intensity take the place of delicacy and furtiveness. The spirit of Nature has grown bold and aggressive; it is rank and course; she flaunts her weeds in our faces. She wears a thistle on her bosom.

John Burroughs

Sunrise/set: 6:46/8:32 Day's Length: 13 hours 46 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/63 Average Temperature: 73
Record High: 98 - 1965 Record Low: 45-1964

Weather
The Midwest continues to be dominated by high pressure – which can linger for up to a week after its arrival near the 10th. The likelihood of highs in the 90s is relatively low - just 15 percent. Temperatures in the 80s are common; they occur 55 percent of the time, and mild 70s come 30 percent of the days. Cool nights in the 50s continue to be recorded four years in ten, and the chances for rain begin to rise, climbing from yesterday’s ten percent up to 25 percent. The likelihood of completely overcast conditions also increases to 25 percent.

The Week Ahead
The weather in the third week of August is relatively stable, bringing highs in the 90s on 15 to 20 percent of the afternoons, milder 80s fifty-five percent of the time, and cool 70s the remaining 25 percent. The 19th of the month, however, breaks from the pattern many years, and it has the highest frequency of 90s (35 percent chance) of any other day in the week. Chances for rain increase from 25 percent at the beginning of the period to 30 percent by August 21st, then drop abruptly to just ten percent on the 22nd.

Natural Calendar
The third week of August is the week in which the Judas trees often show patches of bright orange in the otherwise sold green of maples. It is the week that elms, box elders, and catalpas start to wear thin, and showers of black walnut leaves foretell autumn. Buckeye leaves are browning under the high canopy. Scarlet has appeared in the sumac, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy. Ash, wild grape, redbud and cottonwood can be yellowing from age and summer heat.

Daybook
1983: Walking along the shore of Manteo, N.C., the beach of the Inland Waterway: wild lettuce and bindweed, both with leathery leaves, in bloom here. Mullein, rough-leafed burdock, wild grapes are still green, pokeweed at the same stage as in Ohio.

1985: Goldenrod slowly turning. Ash, maples, catalpas, cottonwood yellowing from the heat and drought. A few dogwoods are violet red. The gray-white flowers of the white boneset dominate the roadsides to Xenia.

1986: Cardinal wakes me up at 6:20 a.m. Geese fly over at 10:27 a.m., and then at 8:05 p.m. At the upper Grinnell path in late afternoon: the last flowers of the season are getting set to open. Bur marigolds are budding, also zigzag goldenrod, broad-leafed swamp goldenrod, and small-flowered asters. A few dark berries on the spicebush. Water horehound and swamp milkweed still open, still a few tall bellflowers, a little wood mint. Jumpseeds aren't jumping yet. Patches of gold on the osage and cottonwoods, one maple yellow green, poison ivy red. Cardinal singing throughout my walk.

1987: First frost in the country reported: 28 degrees in Montana this morning.

1988: Cicadas suddenly become quiet when a thunderstorm passes just north of town. At Ellis Pond, the blue vervain is at its peak, first goldenrod budding, peak of the summer’s fireflies this evening (their season set back weeks by the drought).

1989: A quiet day: only an occasional dove call. No crows, blackbirds, sparrows, cardinals, wrens, blue jays.

1990: Snow in northern Canada reported, as the first of the autumn air masses moves south into the northern states. Warm in Yellow Springs, the height of gold wingstem, purple ironweed.

1993: Four fall-red raspberries yesterday, another four today, three of the second crop of strawberries: the late seasons starting. White phlox declining now in the north garden, disappear overnight in the south garden. Some zinnias just coming into bloom. Two or three balloon flower buds left. Mulberry leaves turning along the south hedge, the fruit has been gone probably since the end of July – along with most of the grackles. Honking geese fly over the west end of town at 7:03 p.m. A few minutes later, half a “vee,” silent over the house.

1996: I noticed that the very first leaves on the front yard maple have turned just a little, the progress of the past few days. In the rose garden, Japanese beetles making a comeback, maybe a new generation born. Geese flew over today, and yesterday, their flights becoming more frequent. In a field beside Wilberforce-Clifton Road this morning, a flock of geese was feeding in the alfalfa.

1998: Cardinals sing at 6:25 a.m., crows at 6:35, blue jays at 7:43.

1999: For the Yellow Springs Almanack: The intensity of early morning robin song decreases slowly through mid and late summer. By August 15th, Yellow Springs robins have stopped giving their predawn calls; they have changed their tune to short chirps and low clucking sounds. This is migration language, and by the end of the first week of September, the robins have begun to gather in flocks throughout the village, the Glen, and along the bike path in preparation for their journey south.
Between the end of the their melodic spring and summer warbling and the beginning of their autumn flocking signals, robins occasionally sing their most poignant and beautiful songs of all.
I first heard one of these interim performances on August 30th,
1989. That day, I noted in my journal how the cardinals had roused me out of bed before sunrise. Then the crows came through a little while later. And then as I got up, a robin gave a long, dramatic call that lasted maybe half a minute. Then silence: no robins or cardinals or even crows for hours.
I have notes about another such call from August 12th of 1990. And this year, August 3rd, I was sitting in the back yard at nine o’clock in the morning, and from the trees a robin started singing loud and strong. Unlike the gentle, monotonous mating and nesting melodies, this was more earnest and more eloquent. And it lasted for minutes, seeming to be a prolonged, melodic cry, a wild lament for the end of summer. The next morning, I listened to another similar song from a different tree in the yard. On the 9th I heard another, but although I have paid attention and have been outside quite a bit lately, I have heard no more.
Whether I am getting older and more nostalgic, or just more sentimental about farewells, these robin valedictions pierce and tear something inside me. They tell me all too clearly that this time is over, that it has been precious and too brief. The birds’ fierce vocal passion speaks the regrets I have no words for at the end of summer.

2001: First cardinal this morning 6:12. Doves and crows at 6:24. Scattered birdsong until about 6:45, then silence. Squirrel chattering at 6:38. No blue jay heard. One yellow jacket seen, not in an apple as usual but in the body of a dead mouse one of the cats had brought home. No other yellow jackets seen so far.

2002: Short-tailed ichneuman found trying to escape from the greenhouse.

2005: Resurrection lilies continue full bloom throughout the village.

2006: In Portland, Oregon, the foliage and flower sequence seems to be about the same as it is in Yellow Springs, patches of yellow on cottonwoods and maples, chicory and Queen Anne’s lace common by the roadsides, roses full bloom, late Japanese honeysuckle, pumpkins ripening.

2007: Portland, Oregon: Raspberries done, blackberries at early full fruiting. Jeni’s everbearing strawberries are sweet, abundant.

August 16th
The 228thDay of the Year

O, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Sunrise/set: 6:47/8:31 Day's Length: 13 hours 44 minutes
Average High/Low: 84/63 Average Temperature: 73
Record High: 98 - 1965 Record Low: 47-1963

Weather
This date brings a 30 percent chance for highs in the cool 70s, a 55 percent chance for 80s, and a 15 percent chance for 90s. Chances for a shower as well as for totally cloudy skies are 30 percent. Nights in the 40s come one year in ten, 50s three in ten.

Natural Calendar
As the sun moves toward its halfway point to equinox, frost season opens in the Northwest, and snow will soon be falling into Hudson Bay. Elderberries are ready for wine in Yellow Springs. It is high bloom for velvetleaf, jimson weed, prickly mallow, wild lettuce, iron weed and wingstem, but teasel and tall bell flower time is over.

Daybook
1982: To Wisconsin: Goldenrod seen in western Ohio and again northern Indiana. Maples are turning in Madison, Queen Anne’s lace, chicory, spurge, white snakeroot, burdock, great mullein, black-eyed Susans, sundrops, Joe Pye weed, trumpet creepers all blooming close to Yellow Springs levels. Motherwort flowers are shriveled and prickly like at home. Heavy goldenrod bloom on the way north to Marshfield.

1983: Cape Hatteras and Okrakoke Island: Ragweed and pokeweed common and at the same stage as in Yellow Springs. Yarrow still in bloom, but fading. Lamb’s quarters, remnants of pepper plants, small-leafed purslane, and water hemlock are open, thin-leafed tick trefoil in bloom, and meadow beauty, white top sedge, small flowered partridge pea, some goldenrod, sea pink, too.

1986: Goldenrod just barely turning along Grinnell Road.

1990: Katydids begin at 8:57 p.m., a little earlier than last week, the sun setting a little earlier.

1999: The hummingbird comes to the rose of Sharon again at 7:15 a.m.

2000: One black walnut tree on the way to Fairborn completely bare.

2001: Cardinals two minutes late this morning, sing at 6:22 a.m. Doves follow at 6:24, crows at 6:27. Jay at 6:38. Squirrel at 6:45. The neighborhood quieting by 7:00, silent by 8:00.

2003: Portland, Oregon: Resurrection lilies seen in full bloom on the way to the airport. Returning to Yellow Springs after a week out west: A cottonwood tree along the freeway was half turned. At home, Joe Pye and phlox are still in bloom. Ironweed has opened. Zinnias and dahlias have replaced almost all the day lilies. Royal Standard hostas are blossoming; they were just budding on the 9th when we left for Oregon.

2004: Tussock moth caterpillars are eating Greg’s butterfly weed.

2007: Return from Portland. Some turning of the trees there, perhaps because of drought. Yellow coneflowers, a variety of the rudbeckia speciosa in full bloom throughout the city. Most phlox gone now here at home; yellow coneflowers have become the dominant planting, make Yellow Springs and Portland seem to be at the same point in the year. This morning, it was quiet at 6:00 a.m. (EDT). Robins began to chirp at about 6:10, cardinals at 6:20, then all the calls stopped at 6:40. A new brood of cabbage butterflies seen at the purple speedwell – at least nine at one time. Monarchs and tiger swallowtails at the zinnias and tithonia throughout the day.

August 17th
The 229th Day of the Year

Old wortermelon time
is a-comin' round again.

James Whitcomb Riley

Sunrise/set: 6:48/8:29 Day's Length: 13 hours 41 minutes
Average High/Low: 83/63 Average Temperature: 73
Record High: 98 - 1908 Record Low: 43-1902

Weather
Today is the last day that temperatures above 100 are likely to occur for the rest of the summer (although the slight possibility remains through the first week of October). Almost three fourths of the afternoons, however, are in the 80s, the remaining fourth in the 70s. The sun appears 70 percent of the time, and showers passing through four days in ten. Evening lows are in the 60s seventy-five percent of the nights, fall to the 50s fifteen percent, to the 40s ten percent.

Natural Calendar
Plums and pears are ripe in the orchards, and the summer apple harvest is more than half complete. Farmers are making preparations for the seeding of winter rye, wheat, and barley. Second brood corn borers, the second generation of bean leaf beetles, and the rootworm beetles still work the fields. Banded ash clearwings attack local ash trees.

Daybook
1983: Manteo, N.C. Poison hemlock in full bloom here, and early great mullein too – actually behind Yellow Springs. Growing season and heat, rainfall, soil conditions, and cutting patterns have all combined to equalize the summer seasons.

1985: A huge flock of geese flew over the house at 8:40 p.m.

1989: The panicled dogwood near the stream on King Street has its first white berries.

1987: First frost in the country reported: 28 degrees in Montana this morning. The tropical storm season is underway in the Caribbean, first storm named a week ago. In central Indiana, catalpas, poplars, cottonwoods faded and some yellowing, soybeans a third turned, some corn browning, late thistles full bloom.

1989: A quiet day: only an occasional dove call. No crows, blackbirds, sparrows, cardinals, wrens, blue jays heard.

1991: Northern Minnesota: Most commercial sunflowers are done blooming, but some patches are still bright, faces still up. White sweet clover is still open here, even a few parsnips. Several varieties of goldenrod wide open.

1992: Resurrection lilies still full bloom in town. On the bikepath south, tall mulleins, black like dead cacti, all the way to Jacoby.

1993: On Stafford Street, a blush of red to a small redbud tree. At Mills Lawn, one black walnut has thinned to maybe half its leaves, some of its fruit fallen. A cluster of yellow black walnut leaves has come down on High Street just a few feet from our yard. In the north garden this afternoon, a flurry of black walnut leaves came down into the asparagus bed from the tree on other side of the hedgerow. At Wilberforce, many crab apple leaves destroyed by skeletonizers, some trees almost bare. Still an occasional firefly.

1997: A few fireflies tonight in the warm, wet evening. Thunderstorms moving across the valley.

1998: No fireflies seen for so long; the drought of the past month deepens. Cardinals sing at 6:25 a.m., crows about 6:40. Flocks of geese flying over Yellow Springs the past two days.

1999: Fishing today at Caesar Creek: Buzzards overhead and great blue herons every few hundred yards. A family of ducks came begging for food at my boat then moved on. The tree line is yellowing: cottonwoods, box elders, ashes, maples. Coneflowers and ironweed, Joe Pye weed, swamp milkweed still in bloom. Wild grapes are dark purple. One catfish caught today and yesterday, pan fish biting at the pan fish hole. In the countryside, some cornfields stressed and withered by the drought; others are completely brown and dead. At the dairy, a baby bird, all pink, an inch long, had fallen from its nest to the picnic table.

2001: The waning moon rising over Glen Helen at 5:50 this morning, above it was giant Venus, a little further up, Jupiter. The Pleiades led them on. Only crickets called until 6:12, then a faint song from a cardinal. At 6:26, crows, 6:28 a blue jay. At the grade school park, two black walnut trees are almost bare. Along the freeway, one cottonwood has lost most of its leaves. At South Glen, the first jumpseeds were loose, just able to jump.

2003: Whistling crickets when I got up at 5:30 a.m., fourth quarter moon high in the southern sky. At 6:00, no birds. Cardinals heard at 6:30, then silence. Crows continue to stay away from Yellow Springs, but several people I’ve talked to recently say crows are still common where they live in other suburbs. One monarch noticed today, several tiger swallowtails.

2004: One arrowhead flower appeared in the pond today, but the plants themselves are not strong this year, are deteriorating along with the rest of the pond vegetation.

2005: Two painted lady butterflies in the zinnias late this afternoon. Monarchs and swallowtails common throughout the day. One arrowhead plant is in full bloom in the pond.

2007: Stonecrop sedum starting to flower in the east garden.

August 18th
The 230th Day of the Year

The field of Nature being beyond the power of any one man to cultivate in full, let everyone begin with his own parish, and till that area intensively.

Gilbert White

Sunrise/set: 6:49/8:28 Day's Length: 13 hours 39 minutes
Average High/Low: 83/63 Average Temperature: 73
Record High: 97 - 1895 Record Low: 48-1899

Weather
Chances for highs in the 90s are 15 percent today; they are 60 percent for 80s, and 25 percent for 70s. Rain comes four times in a decade on this date; completely overcast conditions occur as frequently. Evenings cool to the 40s or 50s one night in five.

Natural Calendar
Daylight is now shrinking by over two minutes every day. Average temperatures, sluggish and stable since the end of June, approach their autumn pattern of decline. In the night sky, the Summer Triangle shifts into the west, following June’s Corona Borealis and Hercules. Delphinus, the dolphin is due south. After midnight, autumn’s Pleiades rise over the northeastern tree line. Orion fills the east before dawn.

Daybook
1985: Railroad Tracks north: Wild grapes purple now. Plums sweet and ready for jelly. Virgin’s bower full bloom, and willow herb, both the yellow and the blue-flowered wild lettuce, thin-leafed coneflower, tall nettle, oxeye, prickly mallow, small woodland sunflower, soft velvetleaf, sundrops, heal all. Elms and poison ivy turning pale yellow. Great blue lobelia found. Clusters of cabbage moths and monarchs. Most mulberries here are gone. Greenbriar with blue-black berries. At home, the bull thistle plant came into bloom.

1986: No cardinals heard today. Long flock of blackbirds crossed Mad River heading north.

1990: Cicadas, crickets, katydids still at their peak. Cardinals quiet, a pattern of silence now.

1991: Reading Thoreau. At the end of his trip on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, he challenged the metaphoric dimension of Nature: “May we not see God? Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?” And: “We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life,” indulging in plants and weather, trees, the river.

1993: Mother finch still feeding her baby in the cherry tree this morning.

1997: Crows this morning instead of cardinals. The sky is gray, the air heavy with old summer, foliage all around the yard becoming a deeper green. Along the back roads, more and more weathering of the leaves, more colors.

1998: Cardinal sings at 6:25a.m., crows at 6:30 (EDT).

1999: The hummingbird came to the pond at 6:59 this morning, hovered for a minute eating insects. Ten minutes later she was back sipping nectar from the rose of Sharon.

2000: Virgin’s bower, Japanese knotweed and jumpseeds are all in bloom, a full range of white patterns both low and high. At the corner of Limestone and Stafford streets, I saw a Judas maple, the first noticed this year; then, paying attention, I found Judas ashes and Judas walnuts almost every block. Fog was hanging across the fields as the evening cooled.

2001: First local goldenrod barely starting to show color. First jumpseed jumps.

2002: Tiger swallowtails have been coming to the garden all through August. This morning, one more, then a giant swallowtail, then a spicebush swallowtail, several cabbage whites, and an orange skipperling. In the south garden, phlox are done, but many patches in town are still strong. Showy coneflowers are still at their best. Some second bloom on the monarda. The hydrangea has finished flowering in the east garden.

2004: A large camel-back cricket in the bathtub this morning. It sat in my hand as I brought it out to the greenhouse. All the tomatoes picked yesterday – pasta making today. The seasonal tide is turning so quickly now, the cool summer intensifying and becoming the feeling of fall. So many trees with touches of color.

2005: Stopped briefly at South Glen: Wild cucumbers, tall coneflowers, leafcup, yellow touch-me-nots, white snakeroot and jumpseed were in full bloom. Burs on the burdock, ready to stick. Red leaves on the path from Virginia creeper, and spots of yellow leaves throughout the trail. Tall bellflowers were on their last blossoms. Wood nettle was declining, a few leaves turning white. Brittle, black seeds of the sweet Cicely scattered when I fingered their clusters. Linden and oak at the triangle park are turning. In the garden, new clusters of cabbage butterflies flutter around the Joe Pye weed.

2007: Robins at 6:13 a.m. (EDT), one cardinal at 6:33, a dove about five minutes later. Then all the birds are quiet by 6:45. Joe Pye weed has rusted, and coneflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, Shasta daisies, and the remaining Heliopsis dominate the garden. Annuals and white-flowered royal standard hostas provide plenty of life in the shade. Webworms noticed in Janet’s redbud.

August 19th
The 231st Day of the Year

That summer I began to see, however dimly, that one of my ambitions, perhaps my governing ambition, was to belong fully to this place, to belong as the thrushes and the herons and the muskrats belonged, to be altogether at home here. It is a spiritual ambition, like goodness. The wild creatures belong to the place by nature, but a man can belong to it only by understanding and by virtue.

Wendell Berry

Sunrise/set: 6:50/8:26 Day's Length: 13 hours 36 minutes
Average High/Low: 83/62 Average Temperature: 73
Record High: 102 - 1936 Record Low: 51-1964

Weather
The 19th is often the warmest day in the third week of August, bringing highs in the 90s on 30 percent of all the years. Temperatures reach the 80s forty-five percent of the time, stay in the milder 70s the remaining 25 percent. Nighttime lows stagnate in the 60s eighty percent of the time, and chances for rain continue at yesterday’s 40 percent.

Natural Calendar
Cicadas chant from an hour or so past sunrise to dusk. The crickets start in about half past eight in the evening. By nine o’clock the katydids have joined them, replacing the cicadas, and chanting katydid until morning when there is a brief period of silence, and then everything starts all over again.

Daybook
1986: No cardinals heard today. As I was driving to Springfield, I saw a long flock of blackbirds heading north. Fishing at Sycamore Hole: carp or chubs steal bait for an hour, then leave, return, biting again in two hours.

1989: Leaves turning a little now in patches across the far tree line. Coneflowers in the south garden continue full, as does the mallow. The second crop of raspberries, light for the past three years, is coming in slowly. A handful about the 15th, another today.

1990: Tomatoes ripening all at once, and zucchinis begin to flower again. Mosquitoes return with the rain. A few fireflies.

1992: To Kalamazoo: Goldenrod starts to bloom just past he Michigan border.

1993: Into South Glen: Wild cucumber common climbing through the wingstem, and purple ironweed is at its best. Across Middle Prairie, a tint of gold from the small locusts. At Mills Lawn park, a yellow poplar has started to turn.

1999: At four this morning, the crickets were loud, no katydids. Then at about 4:15, one or two katydids started in, called for a few minutes, then silence. Now at 5:52 a.m. no bird sound yet, the sky dark.

2001: A cool and cloudy morning, crickets singing: the cardinals didn’t start until 6:31. Six minutes later, the first dove, followed almost immediately by crows. Then a cardinal flew to the apple tree, first motion of the day. Faint, intermittent bird calls through sunrise. Even though so many apples have fallen, no yellow jackets have come to find them this year.

2002: No birds at 5:20 a.m. (EDT), faint cardinal song at 6:00 then fairly common from 6:20 on. First mother-in-law tongue blooms on its long stalk.

2003: Virgin’s bower seen in bloom along Walnut Street.

2004: Very few butterflies have come to the garden this month, no monarchs since the end of July. The pink stonecrop in the east garden is starting to open now, and the Japanese knotweed along the street is in full bloom.

2005: Cardinals at 5:25 a.m. (EST) faintly in the distance, a gentle crescendo of volume for maybe 15 minutes. Doves at 5:35.

2006: Inventory on returning from Portland, Oregon: Resurrection lilies still in bloom, and white phlox, Shasta daisies, rose of Sharon, Royal Standard hostas, black-eyed Susans, July-planted gladiolas, cut-over Heliopsis, roses, ironweed, Queen Anne’s lace, violet mallow late. Joe Pye graying, virgin’s bower budding. Web worms in the white mulberry and Janet’s redbud. Peaches still hard but sweet. Through the countryside, banks of bright chicory, sundrops and Queen Anne’s lace, corn still green with golden tassels, soybeans deep forest green fields stretching for miles, milkweed pods prominent by the roadsides, apples red. On the way to Goshen, nine small flocks of starlings seen, one medium flock of blackbirds. One snout-nosed butterfly seen on the back deck. In the alley, tall coneflowers have completed their season, thin-leafed coneflowers now in full bloom, goldenrod blushing.

2007: Robins started to sing at 6:20 this morning, and a cardinal called at about 6:30. Complete quiet at 6:40 until the crows arrived at 7:30 and called until 8:30. Through the alley, the tall coneflowers and the thin-leafed coneflowers are fully flowered. Blue bindweed covers one of the east fences. Mateo’s goldenrod is turning, but the other goldenrod is still just blushing. His black walnut tree has shed about a third of its leaves. The black walnut by the Catholic church hasn’t really lost much.

Tall ironweed blooms
All around us, purple-blue clusters
Blazing atop stalks six feet tall….

Ann Filemyr

August 20th
The 232nd Day of the Year

Summer's robe grows
Dusky, and like an oft-dyed garment shows.

John Donne

Sunrise/set: 6:51/8:25 Day's Length: 13 hours 34 minutes
Average High/Low: 83/62 Average Temperature: 73
Record High: 98 - 1983 Record Low: 50 - 1897

Weather
Today is typically warm and humid, partly to mostly sunny, with rain four years in ten. Distribution of high temperatures: 20 percent 90s, forty percent 80s, forty percent 70s. Early morning lows find 40 three years out of ten, reach into the 50s five years in ten. Odds for a day in the 90s are only half of what they were two weeks ago, and the likelihood of highs in the 70s is twice as great as it was at the end of July.

Natural Calendar
A few sycamore leaves have fallen now, and hickory nuts are lying on the woodland paths. Burs of the panicled tick trefoil stick to your pants legs. White vervain is gone, and the flowers of blue vervain climb to the top of their spikes, measuring the last days of August.

Daybook
1982: First goldenrod seen in the county.

1983: Hops seen in bloom. First maple leaves in the yard are turning.

1984: Chincoteague Island, Maryland: Marsh mallow, partridge pea, swamp rose mallow, meadow beauty, fogfruit, salt marsh fleabane, horseweed, salsify, pennywort, common ragweed, goosefoot, pokeweed, smartweed, dayflowers, sea pinks, horesemint, St. Andrew’s cross, water parsnip, swamp milkweed all in bloom. Unable to identify many other flowers.

1985: Buckeyes are completely formed now, their shells smooth, cream colored. New basal leaves noticed on the sweet rocket, probably appeared several weeks ago; next year has begun.

1988: Swamp beggarticks just budding at upper Grinnell, white snakeroot still fresh, starlings thick in the evening trees.

1989: On both sides of the South Glen paths, walls of golden wingstem and purple ironweed.

1990: Cardinal sings once at dawn then is quiet.

1991: All across southern Michigan: a fuchsia tint lies on so many shrubs and trees.

1998: First yellow jacket noticed in the fallen apples. One pale swallowtail, all its color faded, wings tattered, visited the garden.

2000: Yellow jackets and large black and white hornets all over the fallen apples this cool sunny afternoon. A few black walnuts came down overnight on High Street.

2001: Cloudy, rainy morning. Cardinals at 6:33, crows at 6:37, jay at 6:41, wren-like chatter at 6:53. I didn’t hear the doves join in at all today.

2002: One Eastern black swallowtail seen today, one yellow tiger swallowtail, one monarch. Purple coneflowers are gone at the Women’s Park, the showy coneflowers fading there, too. Water plantain full bloom in the pond.

2004: Fall webworms found in one redbud and the white mulberry, the first all summer. Virgin’s bower is blooming in Hustead and just starting on Elm Street.

2005: Sitting on the back porch late this evening, I watched fireflies blinking in the yard, one every few seconds.

2006: Fireflies disappeared this year in July.
August 21st
The 233rd Day of the Year

Yet a few sunny days in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And men delight to linger in thy ray.

William Cullen Bryant

Sunrise/set: 6:52/8:24 Day's Length: 13 hours 32 minutes
Average High/Low: 83/62 Average Temperature: 72
Record High: 100 - 1936 Record Low: 46-1950

Weather
Showers come three years out of ten today, highs in the 90s ten percent of the time, 80s six years in a decade, 30 percent for a day in the 70s. Skies are clear to partly cloudy 70 percent of the time. Lows in 60s occur on 80 percent of the nights, cool 50s on the remaining 20 percent.

Natural Calendar
An Incomplete Chronology
of Leafturn during Early and Middle Fall
in an Average Yellow Springs Year
August 25: Orange patches have appeared on a few “Judas” maples. Many locusts are brown from leaf miners. Buckeyes are half yellow.
August 30: Some catalpa and black walnut trees have lost most of their leaves.
September 5: Cottonwoods fade as the goldenrod turns and the soybean fields yellow.
September 10: Silver olive foliage has streaks of ocher.
September 20: Ashes suddenly start their autumn transformation, some becoming maroon, others gold.
September 25: Black walnuts are completely bare. Crab apples are thinning. Hackberries pace the catalpas. Color spreads across the red maples. Blush appears on the sweet gums. Ashes have lost all their green. Box elders are shedding.
October 1: Enough leaves have fallen from the canopy to reveal the deep red of the Virginia creeper on branches and fences. Amber hickories blend with the ashes. White birch leaves show gilded edges.
October 5: Enough orange maples, yellow sumacs, hickories and redbuds, and red oaks have now joined the ashes and cottonwoods to give a full sense of autumn to the landscape. The burning bush is deep scarlet. Beeches are flushed for their November change. The late fields of goldenrod, the dry corn, and the rusting soybeans complete the fall scenario.
October 10: Peak leafturn is starting to occur in woodlots where maples, ashes, buckeyes, wild cherry, and locusts predominate. Most osage are yellow now, a few ginkgoes starting. Cottonwoods and the rest of the box elders lose their leaves, and holes open in the tree line. Fencerows are shedding their Virginia creeper. Grape vines hold on yellow green.
October 15: Witch hazel, the last of the flowering shrubs, opens along Dayton Street. Rains often take down the ashes and redbuds by this date, ending early fall. Full middle fall begins, bringing in the remaining maples for approximately a week.
October 20: White oaks are crimson, but the end of soybean harvest and the browning of goldenrod finally subdue the glowing September fields.
October 25: Silver maples are champagne gold, and the sugar and red maples are down or are shedding quickly. Tulip trees are almost gone. Some ginkgoes are green, others fully gold and losing foliage. Light frosts accelerate the passage of middle fall.
October 30: Osage, sweet gum, ginkgo, and white mulberry continue to keep their leaves. Beeches are half turned. Maples collapse in storms. Some sycamores are totally undone, others, especially those along Corry Street, are only thinning as the mottled land enters late autumn.
November 5: The pear trees along Xenia Avenue are red brown. Sweet gums are coming down. Ginkgoes and white mulberries reach their brightest, and then disintegrate.
November 10: Rose of Sharon shrubs are half bare. Honeysuckles weaken, berries becoming more prominent. Across the countryside, the woods are dark and empty.

Daybook
1984: Snow reported in Hudson Bay. Lows in the 40s now common across the northern states.

1988: Swamp beggarticks and zigzag goldenrod are just budding at upper Grinnell. White snakeroot still not full bloom. Starlings thick in the evening trees.

1991: Flicker calls 7:55 a.m., long quarter-of-an-hour song, then silence. No cardinals or doves heard in the morning, one dove called in the afternoon. Mill Habitat: Love vine full bloom. First goldenrod flowering, most of it ready. Still high late summer, the peak of the blue lobelias and the jumpseed (not jumping), coneflowers still full, and wingstem and ironweed. Insects still everywhere. Tree color holding.

1992: At Caesar Creek: sun, 70s, light wind, waning moon. A Judas maple here and there, some red Virginia creeper leaves, but the tree line basically uniform. Only the vaguest color has begun, the faintest yellowing. Smell of wood smoke in the air. The first hurricane of the season (Andrew) reported in the Caribbean heads northwest toward San Juan (will eventually destroy much of southern Florida).
At my second fishing hole, the poison ivy is red along the bank. Honeysuckle leaves becoming a little pale. Cicadas still strong. Panicled dogwood reddens a little, berries green, spicebush with a hint of violet, love vine leaves are orange, hops full bloom, hanging dense down over the water.
Willows seem dry, rusted. Water horehound full bloom on the stump habitats, leaves purple, mad dog skullcap found there too, scutellaria lateriflora. Biennial guara identified along the bank. Monkey flower very late, beginning to decay. Common arrowhead late bloom. Joe Pye still bright and strong, trumpet creeper holding. Blue vervain middle to late full bloom. Boneset holds, sundrops, queen Anne's lace, great ragweed. The water quiet, but large schools of minnows near the surface. No birdsong most of the day. One blue heron flew silently upriver. One robin peeped. Maggie called from Madison: Jack-in-the pulpit berries had just turned red there. Bergamot is fading, she said. Purple coneflowers almost gone, peak of goldenrod.

1998: Cardinal sings at 6:27 a.m., crows a little later, blue jay at 7:02.

2000: First cardinal at 6:31 a.m. Crows moving in by 6:45. Comparing these times to the notes I made two years ago: it makes as much sense to think that my watch has a different time than it did in 1998 as to think the cardinals and crows are a few minutes off in their morning calls. Sundog in the west this afternoon, maybe an hour before sunset.

2002: One Aphrodite fritillary at the zinnias this afternoon. One tattered yellow tiger swallowtail in the grass. Two more monarchs in the north garden. At eight this evening, two bard owls talking back and forth at South Glen: “Who cooks for you?” Flowers found in bloom: jewelweed, wood nettle, tall bellflower, jumpseed, oxeye, ironweed, wingstem. Goldenrod flushed but not open. One cottonwood seen blanching for autumn.

2003: Two dead cicadas found this morning, one on the sidewalk, one on the grass.

2004: Coming back to the porch from walking around the yard, I found a cicada, almost ready to emerge, crawling on the toe of my boot. I picked him off and set him on the apple tree. Obviously they are continuing to come out even this late in the summer.

2007: Yesterday, I noticed a mother sparrow still feeding her begging fledgling. This morning, after a night of hard rain, the zinnias have collapsed, and the purple coneflowers are bent and tattered, their color drained, their season close to over. Goldenrod gains more brightness in the alley; tall and thin-leafed coneflowers still bright full bloom; some ragweed plants have lost their pollen. More webworms seen. Japanese knotweed full. Mateo’s black walnut trees continue to turn and shed.

August 22nd
The 234th Day of the Year

In the long rays of the last light of that mild August evening, I looked and saw that the chlorophyll had begun to drain from the long stems of the water plants, that a line of brown had begun to form at the waterline of the pond. I noticed that with the sun suddenly down, the air had become unexpectedly cool against my bare arms.

Paul Gruchow

Sunrise/set: 6:53/8:22 Day's Length: 13 hours 29 minutes
Average High/Low: 83/62 Average Temperature: 72
Record High: 101 - 1936 Record Low: 47-1909

Weather
Today is typically drier than any day of August’s final third, and it often begins a five-day period in which rain is 20 percent less likely to fall than during the rest of the month. This is also the first day of a mid-August cool spell, when afternoons in the 90s occur just ten percent of the time. However, temperatures rise to the muggy 80s sixty-five percent of the afternoons, and are in the 70s twenty-five percent of the time. Lows in the 50s cool almost half the nights on this date.

The Week Ahead
This is the week that frost becomes possible in the northern states; snow even occurs at the upper elevations in the Rocky Mountains and in Canada. Here in the Midwest, the third major high pressure system of the month brings chances for highs in the 70s a full 40 percent of the time on August 24th, the first time since July 6th that odds have been so good for milder weather.
As that cool front moves east, the period between August 25th and August 27th usually brings a return of warmer temperatures in the 80s or 90s. The 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th each carry a 30 percent chance of highs in the 90s, and the 25th and 26th are the last days of the year on which there is only a ten to 15 percent chance for mild weather in the 70s.
On the 28th, however, the final cool wave of August approaches, and even though chances for 90s remain strong, the likelihood for chilly highs only the 60s or 70s jumps to 30 percent. August 30th is typically the coldest day of the month, and it brings a 50 percent chance for a high just in the 70s, the first time chances for that have been so good since the last day of June.
Nights in the 40s or 50s continue to occur an average of 40 percent of the time, and the morning of the 29th brings the slight possibility (a five percent chance) of light frost, for first time since the beginning of June.
Chances for rain are typically 35 percent per day now, with the exception of August 28th, on which date thunderstorms cross the region 65 percent of the years in my record. The 25th and 26th are usually the sunniest days this week.

The Same River: Cross-Quarter Time
This week moves the earth halfway between June solstice and September equinox. It took two months to reach this point in the third quarter of the year; now summer stagnation suddenly falls apart, and Yellow Springs rushes toward autumn at twice the rate it did throughout July and middle August.
The planet's changing relationship to the sun quietly turns the color of the landscape, reflecting succession through matter, sequence through leaves and flowers. Repetition of the cycle from year to year sets a calendar of physical dimension that seems to measures passage.
Like rings around the core of a tree, the repetitions circle around our center, bringing the same annual signs and lessons at every point in the solar descent to winter or ascent to spring, creating stability as well as coherence and substance, explicating, making sense of where and who we are.
Perennial observation of recurrence removes the distinction between immediate experience and memory and dreams. In the case of the seasons, it blurs the line between one summer and the next. All summers become one summer. The years turn into one year. Reflection and hope trade places. Time loses linear power. Transformation becomes layered, each level distinct but interchangeable.
Once we find our way, past and future rotate and return like constellations in the night. Passage is illusory. The apparent, specific, individual event and person and every other event and person become inseparable. We step into the same river twice and then over and over again.

Natural Calendar
August 22nd is late summer's Cross Quarter Day, the day on which the sun reaches halfway to solstice. Almost an hour has been lost from the day's length just since the end of July, almost two hours since the year’s longest days in late June.

Daybook
1985: Autumn starlings call in the back locust trees.

1986: Curved pods of the locusts are dry and brittle on the South Glen paths. Some maples are turning early. Touch-me-nots keep popping, leaves starting to lightly cover the paths. At the Covered Bridge a little blue heron seen, the size of a large crow.

1987: Thoreau’s note about how the blue vervain’s flower stalk measures the last days of summer is still valid after a century and a half – and in Yellow Springs, Ohio, seven hundred miles southeast of Concord.

1988: Cardinal up at 6:15 a.m., then quiet.

1989: Japanese knotweed bloomed today.

1990: Pussy willow foliage falling heavily this year, beggarticks heading up, cardinals quiet. Hops deteriorating.

1991: Cardinal sings at eight o’clock. Grackles cackle and call all afternoon in the back trees.

1992: A strong cold wave moved into the Northwest today. Montana had snow and temperatures in the 30s. Two hurricanes are circling in the Caribbean.

1993: Katydids were silent when I woke up this morning at 3:30. Mother cardinal feeding her baby in the cherry tree about 10:00. Still no yellow jackets here to eat the fallen apples. Goldenrod still not open.

1997: Horseweed is just opening. White snakeroot is coming in, but behind its usual timetable. Yellow wingstem and primrose are still fresh. Goldenrod looks to be a week or ten days from flowering. Pokeberries are late turning purple. The violet resurrection lilies and phlox that announced the start of August have held a bit longer than they sometimes do.

1998: Cardinal sings at 6:27, then jays and crows by 6:30, wren at 7:00. First brown Asian ladybug seen at the pond. As showy coneflowers die back along the south wall, goldenrod is opening. Trees deteriorate, paling and dropping leaves rapidly as the late-summer drought intensifies.

1999: A few fireflies still, the intensity of their season stretched by the drought. Starlings or grackles clucking in the trees all day.

2000: Both crows and cardinals this morning at 6:30. Have the crows moved in now for the next six or seven months, their calls the earliest, or synchronous with the cardinals’ until middle spring? Bodies of cicadas here and there around the yard. They still chant through the afternoons, but their autumn dying is underway. Black walnuts on the street yesterday morning.

2001: Several full blooming patches of resurrection lilies near Wilmington. But north in Yellow Springs, all the lilies are gone.

2002: One red admiral butterfly seen today, one monarch, one Eastern black swallowtail.

2003: Several monarchs seen on Kelleys Island today.

2004: A monarch and a great spangled fritillary in the north garden today. The yearling redbud along the west border has lost maybe a fifth of its leaves to a fungus or attack, probably verticillium wilt, a fatal disease. There are also sticky white mealy-bug-type scales on the trunk. The resurrection lilies are gone at Mrs. Lawson’s place and along the south garden border.

2007: I heard a screech owl this morning in the back trees at 6:15. Robins chirped a little at 6:22 until a cardinal called at 6:33, then silence. Rain continues heavy throughout the Midwest, the drought clearly over for the time being. No birds at the feeder at all this morning.

August 23rd
The 235th Day of the Year

The observation of natural history is a simple and powerful form of meditation. In it we find that following the chanting of the katydids and crickets is no less efficacious than the chanting of monks or the sacred mantras of gurus.

Eliades Quintana

Sunrise/set: 6:54/8:21 Day's Length: 13 hours 33 minutes
Average High/Low: 83/62 Average Temperature: 72
Record High: 99 - 1898 Record Low: 44-1888

Weather
There is a 15 percent chance for highs in the 90s today, a 50 percent chance of a high in the 80s, and a 35 percent chance for a high in the 70s. Rain comes three years in a decade. Five nights in ten go below 60 degrees, a percentage that signals a definitive break with Dog Day weather, and another step towards winter.

Natural Calendar
Puffball mushrooms emerge among spring’s rotting stems and leaves. Bees are everywhere in the fields, sometimes five or six on a single flower cluster. Grackles become louder in the afternoons, but an entire morning can go by without a cardinal song or the call of a dove.

Daybook
1982: Tonight, only scattered fireflies. Grackles are becoming more noticeable in the afternoons.

1983: Madison, Wisconsin: Many of the wildflowers are at the same stage as in Ohio: burdock, motherwort, goosefoot, white snakeroot, wild lettuce, ragweed, bull thistles. Some remnants from June and July: a little white sweet clover, and some daisy fleabane.

1985: Jimson weed seen full bloom in Mad River.

1986: One cardinal sings at 8:30 a.m. In the swamp, a few large-flowered bidens are opening. Some new foliage of sweet rocket has started.

1987: After two weeks in Indiana, I returned home to clearweed in full bloom, some purple pokeweed berries, Japanese knotweed budding, boneset full bloom. Yellow jackets, absent most of the summer, were all over the fallen apples. No cardinals heard today.

1988: Geese fly over at 8:30 p.m.

1991: Grackles in the back trees this afternoon. Cardinal sings sporadically, blue jay seen but not heard.

1993: Definite decline in the yellow coneflowers today, about half a dozen wilting. Resurrection lilies also wilting quickly.

1998: Pussy willow leaves maybe a third fallen to the yard. Black walnut leaves half gone in some places.

1999: The frog in the pond has been quiet for several days now.

2000: Snakes in the north yard, but none seen near the pond since June. In the east garden, the stonecrop has started to open. Along the freeway east and on some back roads, the goldenrod has turned. The first small white asters are blooming against the south wall.

2001: Rain this morning, and I listened in the dark from 6:00 to 7:15: not a single birdcall.

2002: Tiger swallowtail at 8:05 a.m. Doves, cardinals, jays off and on throughout the day.

2003: Kelleys Island in Lake Erie: Robins begin to chirping 6:10 a.m., are actively moving around the campground by 6:20. A large flock of blackbirds arrives, like it did yesterday morning, at 6:50. Cormorants fly over at 7:00. The gulls came in to scavenge just a few minutes later. As people woke up and starting moving around, the birds disappeared. Four or five monarchs seen on the drive from the island to Yellow Springs.
2004: Between Yellow Springs and Wilberforce, the land is rusting, turning towards fall. The cornfields are gold and green, and the so many trees are turning early. My ash at school, always ahead of other trees, has a few yellow leaves, reflecting patches of ashes and locusts and lindens throughout the area. At the Mills Lawn park, one black walnut is completely bare.

2006: Just a faint blush on the bittersweet at the corner of Limestone and High. At South College and High, the prairie dock is still in full bloom. A tree cricket seen in the bathroom tonight, a pale, thin katydid-like creature.

August 24th
The 236th Day of the Year

Nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand
Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year.

James Thomson

Sunrise/set: 6:55/8:19 Day's Length: 13 hours 24 minutes
Average High/Low: 82/62 Average Temperature: 72
Record High: 99 - 1903 Record Low: 44-1902

Weather
Under the influence of the third major high pressure system of the month, today brings chances for highs in the cool 70s forty percent of the time, the first time since July 6th that odds have been so good for milder weather. Temperatures warm to the 80s, however, 45 percent of the time, with 90s occurring 15 percent of the afternoons. Rain comes one year in three. Clouds cover the sky four years in ten. Nighttime lows fall below 60 forty percent of the time.

Natural Calendar
Wood nettle has gone to seed. Along the freeways, the umbels of Queen Anne’s lace, so bright through middle summer, are contracting and darkening. Cicadas have begun to die, their brittle bodies appearing all around the yard.

Daybook
1982: Some leaves are turning on our northeast maple. Throughout town, some sumac, box elder, elms and sycamores have shades of yellow and brown. Field thistles are blooming along King Street.

1990: Giant hyssop in late full bloom along Grinnell Road. I noticed it starting maybe two weeks ago.

1992: Sunday morning, barometer steady at 30.34, temperature 66 degrees, humidity 55 percent, sky mostly overcast, scattered fog: I ride down the new bike path toward Goes. On both sides of the right-of-way, protected from cutting by steep banks and ditches: intermittent pasture habitats, roadside habitats, wetland habitats, woodland habitats. The corridor opens a cross-section of the county flora, reveals the pace and the character of the season.
Some things are late this cool year. July’s horseweed is just opening. White snakeroot is way behind its usual timetable. Yellow wingstem and primrose, which provide most of the gold to my ride, are still fresh and strong. Purple ironweed, with the brightest corymbs of the trip, is at its peak. Tall bellflowers, a consistent violet blue from Yellow Springs south to the Little Miami bridge, are holding as though it still were middle summer. Goldenrod, often blooming by the 13th, looks to be a week or ten days from flowering.
Some pasture plants stay on from June: red clovers, white sweet clover, scattered yellow sweet clover, daisy fleabane, sweet rockets way out of time, wood sorrel, white campion. But most of the way, it’s still July and early August: Queen Anne’s lace, Japanese knotweed, thin-leafed coneflowers, cattails, floppy soapwort, boneset, white boneset, yellow moth mullein, soft pale and spotted touch-me-nots, a little wood mint, a few bergamot, great yellow hyssop, one rare cardinal flower, rough Jerusalem artichoke, white bindweed, climbing wild cucumber, shy downy skullcap, goosefoot, the tallest field thistles – some ten feet high with racemes two to three feet across, behemoth, shrub-like burdocks – some still blossoming.

1993: No birds singing before dawn. Katydids quiet in the very early morning, and then one heard at 5:45 for a few minutes, then only crickets. Monarchs have been common for the past week, two even flew in front of the car yesterday when I was driving home from school. Swallowtails have been increasing in numbers throughout August.

1998: Baby wrens in the front yard still huddle in their nest. No morning bird chorus these days: A cardinal called a few times at 6:33 a.m., a crow at 6:40.

1999: Hurricane season is in full swing now, the last week creating three. One went across Texas south into Mexico. The others are moving towards the East Coast.

2001: Skunk odor under the house this morning, following a week of sightings and smells. Katydids at 4:00 a.m., silence soon afterwards. Whistling crickets, making a sound like a dull, long police whistle, were the most prominent singers. Chirping crickets called off and on at 6:00 a.m. First cardinal at 6:55.

2003: Cardinal at 6:15 a.m., continuing on and off until close to 7:00. Doves still calling. Resurrection lilies are still in bloom in Yellow Springs. One last day lily flowering. The first New England aster seen. Purple coneflowers are tattered and well past their prime. The golden rudbeckias are in full bloom but the first of their blossoms have started to shrivel. One firefly seen tonight.

2004: One monarch came to the zinnias this afternoon.

2005: Henry reported clusters of frog eggs in his small pond today.

2006: Skunks continue to spray in the neighborhood close to our house almost every night. Cardinal at 5:29 a.m. (EST) and again about ten minutes later. Then silence. One wren chattered at daybreak. White boneset opened in the yard on the 23rd. Peaches are sweet but still a little hard.

2007: Chickadees, nuthatches, titmice and cardinals dominate the bird feeder this morning, sparrows taking a back row to the songbirds. Mateo’s black walnut tree is now down to about half of its leaves. Euonymus berries are full size, big as honeysuckle berries. The tall, white flowers of Royal Standard hostas dominate Moya’s yard. Monarchs and swallowtails common in the garden. Showy coneflowers starting to die back in Don’s front yard. Our black-eyed Susans are still in full bloom. Cicadas are still strong, start early (about 7:00 a.m. EST) in this long, humid hot spell.

The base of the leaf was yellowish green, but along the sides and tip it was tinted with peach and rose - and this was only the end of August.... I tucked the lone leaf carefully into my wallet. It would remind me to be aware while summer was slipping away.

Sigurd Olson

August 25th
The 237th Day of the Year

What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now, -- as if the rest of the year were down-hill.... The night of the year is approaching.... What have we done with our talent? All nature prompts and reproves us. How early in the year it begins to be late!

Henry David Thoreau

Sunrise/set: 6:56/8:18 Day's Length: 13 hours 22 minutes
Average High/Low: 82/61 Average Temperature: 72
Record High: 99 - 1903 Record Low: 48-1891

Weather
As the third major cool front of the month moves east, the period between August 25th and August 27th usually brings a return of warmer temperatures. Chances for highs in the 90s double over yesterday’s chances, rise from 15 percent to 30 percent. Warm 80s come 60 percent of the afternoons, with cooler 70s only occurring ten percent of the time. Showers pass through Yellow Springs around three years in ten, but the sun shines most of the day (this is historically one of the clearest days in August). Half the nights provide pleasant sleeping in the 50s.

Natural Calendar
Signs of fall coming: rows of lanky great mulleins black and gone to seed, pokeweed the size of small trees with purple stalks and berries, the panicled dogwood with white fruit and leaves fading pink, trefoils decaying, staghorns dark brown above their slightly red or yellow leaves.

Daybook
1983: Bees everywhere through South Glen, sometimes five or six on a single gold wingstem plant. Yellow leafcup, ironweed, tall coneflower, field thistle, white snakeroot, touch-me-not, great blue lobelia full bloom still. Fog fruit discovered. Goldenrod flushed but not open yet. Brown brome grass and parsnips, hops done blooming. Jumpseed mostly gone to seed, wood nettle drooping, Joe Pye weed graying, ragweed heavy with pollen, oxeye fading: everything I notice is a sign of September.

1984: Geese restless, flying near seven this morning. First beggarticks bloomed today.

1985: Honeysuckle berries have turned dark orange in the last week or so.

1986: Grinnell swamp: Blue lobelias still full. Goldenrod has just started here and out toward South Glen. Tick trefoil burs stick to my pants, one more autumn step.

1987: On a rainy afternoon, 65 degrees, the crickets were subdued, bees gone, cardinals silent. The weathering of the leaves was accentuated by the drizzle and gray sky, Judas maples seemed brighter. A few buckeyes had split their shells overnight.

1988: Maples in the yard are still completely green. The drought has not accelerated fall coloring yet.

1990: Cardinals quiet most of the day. Buckeye leaves turning very quickly now. Field thistles are in full bloom, have been for a week or so. Goldenrod is flushed but none seen completely open around Yellow Springs. Late August fogs arriving, humidity higher, making morning temperatures seem sharper. The basil smell of late summer so strong this year.

1992: Across the county, cottonwoods, ash, maple are turning, patches of yellow and red, rusting, fading. Branches of honey locusts bright gold. At my window, the small ash tree, which is always the first tree to lose its leaves, is maybe a fifth gone and deteriorating quickly. It will be bare in a couple of weeks.

1993: Showy coneflowers dying back more quickly, another dozen or so wilted over night. First yellow jacket seen today. They are probably late because the past six weeks have been so dry. Gilbert White notes the connection between hornets and rain in his 18th century journal.

1999: The red sedum has been opening for several days now. Russian sage still strong in the yard and around town. The ironweed and the butterfly bush hold on, solid purple additions to the north garden – but we need dozens more for late August. Heliopsis is going quickly, phlox is almost gone, and flax has disappeared. In the pond, the pickerel plant has a last flower, the purple loosestrife has come to the end of its spikes. Arrowhead is still open, but most of the stalks are leaning over to seed into the water. Showy coneflowers are two-thirds wilted. On the picnic table, the winter tomato plants in their pots look strong, some of them almost a foot high. Beside them, the honeysuckle berries are turning orange. One firefly seen after dark.

2001: Crickets strong at 6:00 this morning, then fade with dawn. Blue jay at 6:36. Cardinal and crows at 6:37. Chatter of a wren, one call only at 6:47. Doves at 6:57. After that, only sporadic singing. Fireflies are completely gone now.

2002: At 5:30 this morning, only crickets. By 6:20, the crickets fading and then cardinals beginning. Throughout the Yellow Springs gardens, rapid decline of late spring perennials: ironweed half gone, only remnants of phlox, Heliopsis, butterfly bush. The dying maple in front of the house is a third turned already. Several monarchs seen today, and a pearl-crescent skipper, a European skipper, and fiery skipper. At South Glen, the first goldenrod is starting.

2003: To southeastern Ohio: Joe Pye still full, goldenrod starting, Jerusalem artichokes seen, wingstem, ironweed, jewelweed bright. Many cottonwoods starting to yellow, many black walnuts almost bare. Probably a dozen monarchs seen on the drive. At home near supper time, I found one more monarch in the ironweed and another in the butterfly bush. Greg came across three hickory horned devils, caterpillars of the citheronia regalis moth, when he was working in Xenia.

2005: To central Ohio, Amish country: The fields and hills were deep green throughout the drive. A number of cornfields showed stress from the scarcity of rain, but the beans were strong, and most corn seemed in at least fair condition. Wingstem was the dominant flowering plant throughout, with sundrops, ironweed, Joe Pye weed common. Some goldenrod was blooming, but most was only flushed. No monarchs seen. At home, virgin’s bower is fully budded, Japanese knotweed in bloom, stonecrop just starting to show pink.

2006: Stonecrop opened on the 24th. Screech owl this morning at 4:30 (EST), called for a few minutes, then silence. Katydids stopped by 3:00 a.m.

August 26th
The 238th Day of the Year

The earth's changing relationship to the sun quietly turns the color of the landscape, creating intervals out of matter, sequence from leaves and flowers.

Bradford Townsend

Sunrise/set: 6:57/7:57 Day’s Length: 13 hours 19 minutes
Average High/Low: 82/61 Average Temperature: 72
Record High: 96 - 1948 Record Low: 47-1945

Weather
There is only a 15 percent chance for highs to remain in the mild 70s today. Eighties are most common, occurring 55 percent of the afternoon. Nineties come frequently too — 30 percent of the time. Chances for precipitation continue at late August's typical 25 to 30 percent, and sun almost always dominates the clouds. Evenings are cool, below 60 half the time.

Natural Calendar
The late Yellow Springs goldenrod flowers this week as cornfields wither with age and summer drought. Acorns are full size, many even brown. Some years, Japanese knotweed and virgin’s bower often reach the height of their bloom.

Daybook
1982: Tips of the maple in the yard starting to turn. Almost all the fireflies have disappeared.

1983: Most fireflies gone.

1984: South Glen: Jumpseeds and touch-me-nots full bloom in the woods. Ragweed, oxeye, heal-all, showy coneflowers, wingstem, and ironweed full in the fields. Some white snakeroot fading. Many milkweed pods fully developed, and some wood nettle flowers have turned to green seed clusters. All the white vervain is gone. Hickory nuts common on the path now. Pokeweed berries are dark and soft. Golden patches of linden along the roadsides. Sedge has withered. Some brown acorns seen. At the covered bridge, red smartweed, burdock, a few tall bellflowers, agrimony, hog peanuts, wild lettuce flowering. Asters budding.

1987: Bittersweet scent of old apples in the damp, heavy night. Cygnus, the Northern Cross, overhead in the clear night sky.

1988: Short cardinal song at about eight o’clock this morning. The pre-dawn songs ended about a week ago. At South Glen, wingstem late full, ironweed, sundrops, and ironweed full, bees everywhere. Acorns now full size, most still green.

1990: Cardinals quiet most of the day. Buckeye leaves turning very quickly. Fogs moving in, humidity higher, making morning temperatures seem sharper, even though they’ve stayed in the 60s.

1992: Hurricane Andrew moving through Louisiana this morning. Should reach Yellow Springs in a couple of days. Cardinals quiet today, crows come and go. The first puffball mushrooms noticed growing in the woods at Grinnell and Wilberforce-Clifton Road. Crickets keep singing. Cicadas quiet until mid morning. The last firefly a few nights ago. Phlox suddenly almost gone. Redbuds and hackberry yellowing.

1993: Geese flew over at 8:45 a.m. Very last balloon flower bloomed today. Some phlox left, maybe a fourth. Daddy longlegs increasing in the house in the past week. Goldenrod has started at South Glen and Wilberforce. Two fireflies seen in half an hour of watching tonight.

1998: Honeysuckle berries turning orange, Japanese maples turning orange, too. Cleome remains a colorful complement to the zinnias and cosmos.

1999: Cardinal sings at 6:45 (EDT), then silence. Heavy fog throughout town. No frog calls for days now. Koi still active and feeding heavily in the pond.

2000: This morning near 6:00 (EDT), the low whinny of a screech owl in the back locust trees.

2001: From near 7:00 (EDT) this morning, the blue jays were restless and loud. Now it’s nearly 8:30, and the crows and cardinals are still going strong. Yesterday, very little sound from the birds, but the weather was similar to today’s.

2002: Crickets were still singing when I went outside at 6:00 a.m. (EDT) Doves started at 6:22, cardinals at 6:29, crows at 6:42, cricket sound diminishing as the sky lightened. The yard mostly quiet by 6:55.

2003: Three monarchs seen today.

2004: Birds becoming more common on the phone wires along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road.

2005: Only vague, distant bird calls this morning at 5:35 (EST).

2006: Cardinal sang at 5:40 (EST). A skunk wandered across the backyard at about sunrise. Monarchs and skippers and swallowtails were common throughout the day. Storms tonight put an end to the late-summer drought.

August 27th
The 239th Day of the Year

A fierce storm comes up, with wind, rains, thunder and lightning. A truly awe-inspiring event, and one I love. And I wonder, How many more will I see?

Naomi Bliss, age 91

Sunrise/set: 6:58/8:15 Day's Length: 13 hours 17 minutes
Average High/Low: 82/61 Average Temperature: 71
Record High: 97 - 1948 Record Low: 43-1910

Weather
Highs in the 90s come 25 percent of the years, 80s fifty-five percent, 70s twenty percent. Chances for completely overcast conditions: 25 percent, for rain 35 percent. Nighttime lows are usually in the 60s, but cool 50s come two or three years in ten.

Natural Calendar
Ragweed pollen disappears with the last of the phlox. The great blue lobelia, landmark of late August, is in full bloom. The year’s final tier of wildflowers is budding: beggarticks, bur marigolds, asters, zigzag goldenrod. Although the morning chorus of birds is over for the year, scattered cardinals, crows, doves, and blue jays call off and on 20 minutes or so before sunrise.

Daybook
1982: Still blooming at South Glen: jumpseed, leafcup, clearweed, white snakeroot, tall bellflower, wingstem, Queen Anne's lace, great and common ragweed, ironweed, goldenrod, nettles, pale and spotted touch-me-nots, horse nettle, burdock, sundrops, wild lettuce, chicory, celandine, day flowers, yellow wood sorrel, showy coneflowers, daisy fleabane, bindweed, wild petunia, Joe Pye weed (old), mock cucumber, great blue lobelia, heal-all, hog peanut. First autumn violet found.

1983: First autumn violet blooming in the path at Middle Prairie. Black walnut leaves almost all down, fruit ready. A few fireflies still out.

1985: At the mill, only the tips of the blue vervain hold. Lizard’s tail dropping its foliage. Water horehound, mad-dog skullcap found. Jump seeds have started to jump, and the first aster of the year is flowering, Short's aster. A last firefly tonight.

1986: Goldenrod finally starts to open. Corn fields start yellowing. Cardinal sings steadily before dawn.

1987: Starlings chatter in the trees. Leaves seems to be turning early, maybe from the dry August.

1988: Soft cardinal songs in the morning rain.

1989: Peach leaves coming down into the dahlias, knotweed half full bloom, new mullein sprouting in the iris bed. Cardinal sings at dawn and then near sundown, wistful. Ragweed turning. Yard maples falling. New sprouts of some wildflower by the peonies. Cicadas still loud near sundown. Clusters of hops, box elder weathering. At Caesar Creek, lotus and arrowhead are still in full bloom. Only one goldenrod seen on the way south to the reservoir. Trees weathered throughout.

1990: Hundreds of yellow cabbage butterflies swarm along Wilberforce-Clifton road.

1991: Janet Hackett called yesterday to say the katydids had stopped singing. She wondered if they had moved, been eaten, driven off by predators. Tonight when I went outside, the katydids were quiet, but then up the block they were chanting full force. Janet’s insects must have just moved.

1998: A few black walnut trees in town have lost all their leaves, stand naked with their round green fruit waving in the wind. Tulip trees are a third yellow toward the college. Rapid onset of color now, cottonwoods turning all at once, the dry August catching up with all the flora.

2001: I came outside at 6:35 this morning. No cardinals heard, but doves were calling. At 6:39, the bell call of a blue jay, then responses from other jays. Then crows a minute later. Finally at 6:42, a cardinal. A robin clucking at 6:45. Then scattered repetitions throughout my walk.

2002: One spicebush swallowtail, so bright blue, and a beautiful golden sulfur, the “common” sulfur.

2003: Cloudy, humid and 75 degrees at 6:00 a.m. No birds heard this morning, but the cicadas started right in with sunup. Two monarchs seen, even though I spent most of the day indoors. A violent storm this afternoon brought down a huge limb from the back locust tree. It crushed some of the north garden’s zinnias and the new hydrangea.

2004: No butterflies noticed on a drive to Columbus. First virgin’s bower opened on the trellis, at least a week later than other vines of that type in town.

2005: Crickets were still singing when I went outside at 6:00 a.m. (EDT) Doves started at 6:22, cardinals at 6:29, crows at 6:42, crickets quieting as the sky lightened. The yard silent by 6:55.
The sun rose at 7:00 (like on March 7), the day’s length moving toward 13 hours, an hour lost from the morning, an hour lost from the evening since solstice. Average temperatures down 4 degrees from the peak in July, highs down 4, lows down 4.
At South Glen, milkweed pods fully developed, milkweed bugs still mating. All the white vervain is gone. Only one or two blossoms on the small-flowered agrimony. Golden patches of linden along the roadsides. Honeysuckle berries orange, one tall goldenrod plant opening.
First autumn violet blooming in the path beyond the barn. Lizard’s tail dropping its foliage into Yellow Springs Creek, damselflies hunting in the pink smartweed. Burdock forming burs, Joe Pye weed almost all brown, knotweed just beginning to bloom, wild cucumber fruits an inch long. Jumpseeds have started to jump, and the first aster of the year is open.
Tulip trees are yellowing at the college, cottonwoods turning all at once, elms and catalpas, hackberries blanching, some Virginia creeper leaves deep red on the path, some black walnut and buckeye trees almost bare. Locust leaves all over the parking lot at school. Some ash and maple foliage blushing.
A long flock of blackbirds flew over Beavercreek when I was there this morning. Blackbirds filled the telephone lines in Xenia, and hundreds of yellow cabbage butterflies swarmed along Wilberforce-Clifton road this afternoon.
At home, peach leaves drift down into the dahlias, knotweed half in bloom, new mullein sprouting in the iris bed, virgin’s bower opening on the trellis, stonecrop coming into bloom by the front porch. Dragon flies still hunt at the pond. New England aster buds are purple by the north trellis. Fireflies and Japanese beetles almost gone, chigger bites still itching on my right calf and ankle.

2006: Cardinal at 5:40 a.m. (EST). Bright blue morning glories have spread through the raspberries and the compost bin in the alley. Ragweed still has golden pollen. One cottonwood along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road shedding in the breeze. The honeysuckle berries at the front trellis, the markers of winter and spring for the next six months, are just beginning to turn. At the same time, a blush is forming on the bittersweet berries above the sidewalk at the corner of High and Limestone Streets.

Grounding in just what lies around me, learning to accept home, learning the limits of independence, the solitude of landscape, finding enough in the most simple observations, embracing the ordinary and expecting nothing more, accepting this particular passage of time, salvation in the commonplace, the measurement of the dragon fly, the measurement of the goldenrod, asking nothing more than these plain acts, allowing, opening, watching the finite visions that contain no transcendence or special compensation, considering the precision of each fragment that names the exact place of Earth’s orbit and my exact place within it now.

August 28th
The 240th Day of the Year

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns,
moons, planets....

Walt Whitman

Sunrise/set: 6:59/8:13 Day's Length: 13 hours 14 minutes
Average High/Low: 82/61 Average Temperature: 71
Record High: 96 - 1953 Record Low: 40-1910

Weather
Today is another pivot day on the way to autumn as the chances for a high in the 60s rise to 15 percent. Seventy-degree highs take place 25 percent of the time; 80s occur 40 percent, 90s twenty percent. Lows dip below 60 on a third of all the nights. Rain falls (and the sun fails to shine) today 65 percent of the years, making this is one of the three wettest and grayest days of the summer months; July 3rd and June 20th are the other two. And, for the first time since the beginning of June, the lightest of frosts becomes a slight possibility.

Natural Calendar
These are the last days of late summer, the transition time to early fall. Red, purple and white phlox and the violet Resurrection lilies have almost disappeared. The tall loosestrife which began its season in the middle of June has completed flowering. Purple coneflowers and Joe Pye weed are pale now, and golden coneflowers have begun their three-week process of decay.

Daybook
1979: Northeast maple in the yard starts to turn.

1981: All lightning bugs gone.

1982: Geese fly over 8:45 a.m. All lightning bugs gone. Raspberries continue to come in, another quart this morning.

1983: Down the railroad tracks past the Vale: Hops in layered flowers, catmint still in bloom, tall bellflower fading. Day flowers, ironweed, jumpseed, smartweed, giant yellow hyssop, white morning glories, a few domestic phlox holding. Field thistle up to seven feet with bright violet flowers. Wild cherry has dark fruit. Purple berries and fading leaves on the pokeweed. Sundrops remain, but most great mulleins gone. White sweet clover hanging on, probably cut over. Thin-leaved coneflowers late bloom, boneset and white snakeroot still common.
Elms seem to be getting lighter, blanching with the approach of fall. Milkweed bugs are still mating, spotted orange touch-me-nots still blooming, wingstem, a few fleabane, beggarticks almost blooming, soapwort, goldenrod not even yellow here; horseweed, burdock brown and bent. Trumpet creepers still strong, bright orange.

1984: The leaves are turning: catalpas are paling, some maples red, some yellowing. Poplars, hackberries started to deteriorate a week or two ago.

1988: Now elderberries are deep purple (as are my grapes) and sweet for picking. Rudbeckia speciosa, showy coneflower, still full bloom, but shifting past its peak. Japanese knotweed open in the yard. Milkweed bugs still mating.

1989: Mourning doves still calling off and on today, late summer holding.

1990: More cabbage butterflies along Wilberforce-Clifton. Some great autumnal hatch.

1992: Joe Pye weed at Wilberforce still full bloom. Doves call after dawn. Cardinals sing once, 6:45 a.m. Last of the white phlox today; several red blossoms stay. Goldenrod finally blooms along Grinnell and throughout my drive. Monarchs and swallowtails increasing at the zinnias.

1998: Tulip trees half yellow. The pond’s last arrowhead bloomed today; the rest of the plant has round and green seed pods, three-fourths of an inch across. Some black walnut trees in town are completely bare, fruits dangling in the wind.

1999: A dove was calling this morning, maybe eight o’clock. Some goldenrod flushed but not even close to opening. Heliopsis and showy coneflowers continue to deteriorate quickly, the south garden finally losing its vitality. Along the Carolina coast, Hurricane Dennis is moving in.

2000: Soft whinny of a screech owl in the back trees at 7:13 a.m.

2001: Only crickets this morning until one cardinal sang at 6:45. Webwormc noticed in the pussy willows. They must have just emerged – their web seeming to appear overnight. Scorpion fly found in the north garden.

2002: Two monarchs flew by together as I walked near the zinnias. This afternoon, I found an ailanthus webworm moth on the archway into the house.

2003: Fall sedum is coming into bloom by the front porch. Four more monarchs seen today. A huge camel cricket got into the tub last night, was hiding behind the shampoo bottles this morning. Bella found a baby squirrel among the debris of the locust that fell yesterday. It was three to four weeks old, eyes not open yet. We gave it a little liquid, then took it to an animal rescue center in Troy.

2004: One cardinal song at 6:50 (EDT) this morning. A flock of crows was calling about five minutes later. Then silence, then more crows and cardinals a little after 7:00, then quiet. Working outside this afternoon, I noticed how sluggish the scorpion flies were, allowing me to brush them off the plants.

2005: Doves calling at 6:30 a.m. (EDT). Cardinals a little later. At Antioch School, the mountain maple seeds hang in brown clusters.

2007: Heat and clear sky today before the cool front due tomorrow. Japanese knotweed, stonecrop, jumpseeds, Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susans, a few roses, hibiscus and the Royal Standard hosta are the perennials flowering in the yard. Rose of Sharon blossoms are becoming scarce. Few birds have come to the feeder the past day or two, almost no morning birdsong. Painted lady butterfly seen in the garden yesterday and the day before – the first I’ve noticed this summer. I drove south to Hillsboro this evening. Once I reached Jamestown about 15 miles from home, I reached the drought area. From there for the next 40 miles, the corn fields were stressed and withering, soybeans stunted and turning gold. The grass on one graveyard was completely brown.

August 29th
The 241st Day of the Year

Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunrise/set: 7:00/8:12 Day's Length: 13 hours 12 minutes
Average High/Low: 82/61 Average Temperature: 71
Record High: 96 - 1953 Record Low: 41-1986

Weather
Nineties comes 30 percent of the afternoons; 80s occur 30 percent of the time, 70s thirty percent, 60s ten percent. Today is typically twice as sunny as yesterday, with all but 20 percent of the days bringing clear or partly cloudy skies. Rain falls three years in ten. Another pivot to autumn, this one a bit dramatic: a very light frost could appear on the roof one year in every 20. One night in three drops below 60 degrees.

Natural Calendar
Cottonwoods are turning, and box elders, catalpas and black walnuts have started to lose their color. A few big yellow leaves of the white mulberry drop early. Locusts and lindens are rusting from leafminers. The rare Judas maple of early August spreads its orange and red across the hillsides. Tall coneflowers decline.

Daybook
1982: Record low temperatures (below 30 degrees) in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Arrowhead still blooming at Ellis Pond. Geese came over the house after supper.

1984: West from Maryland to Ohio: Touch-me-nots full throughout, white and yellow moth mullein common. Sundrops everywhere, Joe Pye strong but some fading. First white asters picked, aster pilosus. Clovers abundant; crown vetch, yellow and white sweet clover. Old standbys of late summer: Queen Anne's lace, chicory, wingstem, ironweed throughout the East. Wild lettuce definitely done. Mullein and burdock are old but still blooming, milkweed gone, its leaves yellow green. Horseweed strong. Japanese knotweed here and there, some butter and eggs. Home by suppertime. Geese flew over the house at 7:30 p.m.

1986: No cardinals heard at all today.

1987: Honeybees working the goldenrod, huge yellow nodules of pollen on their legs. Cardinal sang at 10:30 and 11:00 a.m.

1988: First maple tree leaves in the yard turn overnight in the rain. Wingstem fading, burdock forming burs. Common dodder (love vine) has colored the riverbanks rust with its tangle of tendrils, and is finally in bloom. At the Covered Bridge, Joe Pye weed is almost all brown, goldenrod and knotweed just opening. First woolly bear caterpillar of the year seen today. Crickets silent tonight.

1989: Cardinals and doves began to sing a half hour before dawn. They’ve continued now for hours. Is it the beginning of second spring - a renewal of birdsong?

1990: Cardinal called once this morning, then quiet.

1992: My ash at Wilberforce is almost completely golden green.

1996: The wren nest in the begonia hanging on the front porch is finally empty. The mother tended the two eggs and the babies all August. Hope the young made it past the cats.

1998: Cardinal sang at 6:37 this morning, crows followed, then a wren. The birds sang off and on for half an hour or so. By 8:30, grackles and doves were calling, the others quiet. In the pond, the water lilies continue to bloom, one or two a day. The last arrowhead is flowering today, and its seedpods are big and green now, its leaves yellowing. Autumn coming quickly.

1999: Cardinals and crows this morning at about 6:40. Then quiet for a while, then a resurgence by 7:30, then more quiet.

2000: To Wilmington and back: Flurries of black walnut leaves, goldenrod in bloom, white boneset, field thistles, sundrops, tall coneflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, chicory, horseweed, Jerusalem artichokes, stonecrop, jewel weed. At Wilberforce, my ash tree is losing leaves on schedule, and maybe a fourth of the leaves are yellow. On Wilberforce-Clifton road, one mimosa tree is still in bloom.

2001: Jumpseed is still in full bloom along the sidewalk in front of the house. One Judas maple turning in Hustead, but nothing else all the way to Columbus. Then: yellow locust leaves all over the parking lot at the university. From my office window in Troutman Hall, one red maple has just a tinge of color here and there. The great white oak is still pure dark green.

2003: At South Glen, some buckeyes are completely bare. Wild cucumber is in full bloom, some fruits more than half an inch long. Wingstem and ironweed are still in flower, goldenrod here still just budding (although yesterday I saw several plants open along the road to Troy). A few jumpseeds are jumping, some wood nettle leaves turning white.

2004: Crickets were still singing at 5:00 (EST) this morning; they quieted in proportion to the advance of sunrise. No cardinals until 6:10, then silence until I heard doves about 6:30.

2005: Hummingbird moth seen in the impatiens at about 11:30. Monarchs still common in the zinnias.

2007: A cardinal called twice at 6:40 this morning, crows came by at 6:55. Tall coneflowers decline suddenly in the alley. Jumpseeds aren’t jumping yet. A hummingbird came to the feeder off and on this morning.

August 30th
The 242nd Day of the Year

That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me...

Thomas Hardy

Sunrise/set: 7:01/8:10 Day's Length: 13 hours 9 minutes
Average High/Low: 81/60 Average Temperature: 71
Record High: 96 - 1953 Record Low: 43-1986

Weather
Today is mild in the 70s fifty percent of the time; there is a 40 percent chance for 80s, ten percent for 90s. Rain, along with a totally or mostly cloudy day, comes one year out of three. Four nights in twelve dip below 60 degrees.

Natural Calendar
Crickets, katydids and cicadas are still loud as stonecrop reaches early full bloom. Along the lake shores, arrowhead is declining rapidly, lotus weakening. Telephone wires fill with birds as migrations accelerate. Flickers, red-headed woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, house wrens, scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, Eastern bluebirds, robins, grackles, and black ducks move south.

Daybook
1983: Some maple leaves falling in South Glen. Cabbage butterflies still mating. Geese fly over in the evening.

1988: Geese flew over this evening, eight o'clock. Pennsylvania leatherwings mating on the knotweed flowers.

1989: Cardinals, crows, doves began to sing near dawn. As I got up, a robin gave a long, loud call, it lasted maybe half a minute.

1990: At South Glen, some wingstem and ironweed have started to go to seed. Coneflowers and helianthus still in bloom. The tree line is rusting now, so much deepening of color, wearing down, decaying. Goldenrod just starting at South Glen, one or two heads are open here and there. Zigzag goldenrod is budding under the canopy. Blue cohosh berries are thinning, red clusters of Jack-in-the-pulpit have toppled. Wood nettle has gone to seed, ragweed old now.

1996: A short stop at South Glen: butterflies everywhere, so many species. The woods and undergrowth tattered now, leaves turning early. Goldenrod just coming in. At home, the pink asters (the annuals grown from seed) are full and strong. The zinnias continue to bloom well, but the cosmos are falling over. The ladyslippers have completely disappeared in the past week, and the showy coneflowers are at least half gone.

1998: The fish in the pond have been quieter, more reluctant to rise over the past two weeks. Water and sky clear, season of clarity.

2001: No birdsong this morning until a dove started singing at 5:37 (EST). A few minutes later crows, then a jay. No cardinals until after sunrise. Rhythms changing, syncopating, receding.

2002: Knotweed full bloom in the yard. First woolly bear caterpillar seen on the other side of the butterfly preserve. Wingstem prominent, ironweed almost all gone. Red berries on the Jack-in-the-pulpit. A large brown wood nymph seen, like a satyrus pagala in the blackberry bushes.

2003: Two monarchs in the garden today in the hour or so that I was outside. Birds flocking – look like starlings – on the wires when we drove to Dayton this morning.

2004: A long flock of blackbirds flew over Beavercreek when I was there this morning at 10:30. All across the city, ashes are turning quickly. Along Dayton Street, the serviceberry trees have lost almost all their leaves. No bird song this morning, not even a crow.
Casey told me that when he and Rusty Neff, Joe Ayers and Eli Sweatland were having coffee at Dino’s, they talked about the unusually intense activity of the squirrels. “They were packing walnuts like they were just invented,” said Casey. “Looks like it’s going to be a cold winter.”

2005: The rain from Hurricane Katrina is reaching Yellow Springs today, 24 hours after it struck New Orleans. The rain will nurture the new lettuce that just sprouted by the tomatoes in the garden. Cardinals and doves were quiet this morning, and the crickets stopped calling by 6:00 a.m. (EST) Albert, the pond’s green frog, croaked once at about 6:45 a.m. Arrowhead still open in the water garden.

2006: Cardinal at 5:45 a.m. (EST) this morning Mateo’s goldenrod is about a half in bloom. The goldenrod at the Dayton Street side of the alley is still just starting to show some color. No doves noticed lately.

2007: Four hummingbirds noticed together in the garden this noon – a small migrating group? Cabbage butterflies abundant.

August 31st
The 243rd Day of the Year

The rayons of the sun we see
Diminish in their strength,
The shade of every tower and tree
Extended is in length.

Alexander Hume

Sunrise/set: 7:02/8:09 Day's Length: 13 hours 7 minutes
Average High/Low: 81/60 Average Temperature: 71
Record High: 100 - 1951 Record Low: 42-1915

Weather
Forty percent of the early morning temperatures are in the 50s today. Highs climb to 90 ten percent of the afternoons, to the 80s fifty-five percent, and the 70s forty percent. The chance for rain continues to be about 35 percent. A totally cloudy day occurs this last day of the month five years in a dozen.

Natural Calendar
Deep in the woods, the final days of the year’s wildflowers coincide with the first days of second spring, which are actually the first days of next spring. March’s purple deadnettle comes up in the garden. The garlic mustard that will flower two Aprils from now sprouts in the rain. Wood mint produces new stalks. Watercress revives in the sloughs. Next May’s sweet rockets and next July’s avens send up fresh basal leaves. Sweet Cicely foliage grows back. Sedum reappears, stalky from its canopied summer.

Daybook
1983: Goldenrod turning slowly now.

1984: Velvetleaf going to seed in the yellowing soybeans here, but stronger as I went north to Wisconsin.

1986: No cardinals heard today. Ragweed pollen gone in the yard. Soybean leaves half yellow. Some ash foliage reddening.

1987: Cardinals singing sporadically near eight o'clock this morning, then quiet. Maple in front of the house is starting to turn.

1989: Now a rapid turning of leaves, some osage yellow, and the lower leaves of the tree of heaven are turning. No more fireflies, no cardinals, no doves. Crickets, katydids and cicadas still loud. Prime of the last full wildflower bloom. At Caesar Creek, catfish have disappeared from my fishing hole, replaced by yellow bullheads. Along the shore, arrowhead is declining rapidly, lotus weakening.

1996: Mill Habitat with Rainer to check water quality of the Little Miami: We found a large turtle sleeping in the riffle, counted a number of Dobson fly larvae, caddis fly larvae, beetle larvae, found a Mayfly larva, a small red water worm, and a small live clam. The water quality was fair to good, according to the standards Rainer has been using.

1997: The days have been mild. Yellow patches on the silver olives. Virginia creeper reddening. Resurrection lilies all gone. Large sedum in full bloom.

1999: South Glen: Goldenrod shows plenty of color in Duckwall’s fields. Under the canopy, the first zigzag goldenrod is opening. Jumpseeds are still soft, not jumping at all. The small white asters are budding, but not really close to opening. Garlic mustard for 2001 has sprouted from the last rain (a week ago). At home, the maple shows orange patches, and the ash at the southeast corner of the yard is yellowing. Ironweed is starting its down side. Along the bikepath, all the coneflowers are dying back at once.

2000: Rudbeckia and ironweed are dying back quickly now, and the very last of the arrowhead is in bloom. Birds fill the telephone wires at the market. Showers of apple, locust and black walnut leaves fall in the sultry 90-degree afternoon. I found toads an inch long in the grass.

2003: Cardinals and doves heard at 6:50 in the cool, rainy morning, still singing at 7:30 when I started breakfast.

2004: A chilly, quiet morning, few crickets before dawn. A few chigger bites remain on my right calf and ankle.

2006: Chiggers continue to bite Jeanie when she works outside in the garden. Large spiders spinning evening webs from the porch beams. In the northwest garden, ironweed, the pink rose, Heliopsis, a few zinnias, and several large clumps of black-eyed Susans keep color in the yard. Pink sedum in the east garden is half in flower. Virgin’s bower well budded on our trellis, but in full bloom at the corner of Elm and Dayton Streets.

2007: Chiggers seem to be coming back with drier weather. One Japanese beetle found in the roses today. No birds heard before sunrise. Pink sedum in t he east garden is half in flower. Two more hummingbirds seen together today. No fireflies seen for at least a week or two. Don’s showy coneflowers are at least half decayed.