The Old Farmer's Almanac 2015 (16 page)

September Hath 30 Days

In every orchard Autumn stands,
With apples in his golden hands.

–
Alexander Smith

Farmer’s Calendar

We planted a pear tree in the backyard many years ago and forgot about it. It grew up tall and skinny, with no flowers, and hence no fruit.

Two years ago, it flowered for the first time; by that September, its branches were heavy with fruit. We sampled a few from lower limbs (most were 20 to 30 feet up). Puckery, but delicious; we decided to pick up windfalls when they were more ripe. We watched the green fruit turn rosy with great anticipation.

Then one morning, there were no pears. None on the tree; none on the ground. We tried to imagine what had happened to them. Birds? Insects? The day before, there had been no sign of holes or chewing. And how many birds or insects would it have taken to denude a 60-foot-high pear tree in a single night?

It took a day or two to come up with a hypothesis. We have a bear, maybe two, in the neighborhood. We’ve seen one quite close to the house, once at the foot of the front steps.

The tree and its branches are far too slender to hold the weight of a hungry bear, but for the same reason, it would be easy for a hungry bruin to shake the tree hard enough to dislodge ripe fruit. It seems that we were not the only ones who had been looking for the proper moment to harvest.

The Tenth Month

SKY WATCH
Saturn, the only remaining evening star, begins the month low in the southwest at dusk and vanishes by month’s end. Low in the predawn eastern sky on the 1st is a worthy sight for insomniacs—a dramatic vertical lineup of (from top to bottom) Venus, Leo’s bright star Regulus, Mars, and Jupiter. From the 8th to 11th, Mercury and the Moon join the festivities. Mercury is much lower than the others. The waning crescent Moon pays each planet a call on successive mornings: Venus, with Regulus to its left, on the 8th; Mars on the 9th; Jupiter on the 10th; and Mercury on the 11th. Uranus reaches opposition on the 11th. Venus and Jupiter are very close on the 25th.

October Hath 31 Days

Witch-hazel shakes her gold curls out,
Mid the red maple’s flying rout.

–
Lucy Larcom

Farmer’s Calendar

We speak of foliage season as if it were only one season. Actually, it is at least four.

Call the first “Scarlet Fever,” flaring up in the swamps and along the highways in distressed trees by mid-August. The color comes so early that you feel disoriented; Columbus Day weekend is still 2 months away!

The second season, when the reds are joined by fiery oranges and yellows, might be called “Conflagration”: The colors are intense, almost glaring. At full Conflagration, the sun passing through the maple outside our bedroom sends a shaft of pink light through the window.

A little later, after rains and wind, we enter the “Empire of Yellow.” Walking the dogs on a gloomy day in late October, I kept looking up, thinking that the Sun had come out. But it was only flashes of the golden canopy as I passed under darker trees.

November brings “Tannery,” a leathery collection of browns in many shades. The oaks are the last to shed their leaves, covering the fading Oriental carpet rolled out by the previous residents.

Even then, however, come occasional surprises. Last week on a secluded woods road, we were surprised to encounter a single, brilliant, sugar maple torch, the last survivor of Scarlet Fever.

The Eleventh Month

SKY WATCH
Venus stands very near Mars from the 1st to the 3rd, just before dawn in the east, with Jupiter closely above them. The crescent Moon passes to the right of Jupiter on the 6th and to the right of Venus on the 7 th, with nearby Mars just above them both. This planet group forms a nice little triangle, although the Martian “point,” at magnitude 1.7, is so dim that it might easily be overlooked; Venus is 200 times brighter! Look at the crescent Moon to see earthshine—a faint glow on its dark portion caused by reflection of sunlight from Earth. Saturn passes behind the Sun in a conjunction on the 29th, ending its evening star role.

November Hath 30 Days

The winds are out with loud increasing shout,
Where late before them walked the biting frost.

–
Jones Very

Farmer’s Calendar

Until she died at the age of 100, my mother-in-law, Betty, was a Thanksgiving magnet. She drew dozens of interesting guests, such as two former Lost Boys of the Sudan, to her table. I should say “tables”—every flat surface in the house had to be set up to entertain the crowd.

Everyone shared the cooking and cleaning while Betty sat in the front parlor, interrogating the guests. She wasn’t much interested in talking about herself. The kids made place cards for everyone, or learned to play mah-jongg, or just raced around the 1813 colonial that had a spinning wheel and a cavalry saber in the attic. A favorite tradition was to teach the younger children how to hang spoons off their noses.