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Poor Will's Almanack: September 1 - 7, 2020

Alan Wolf / Flickr Creative Commons

Poor Will’s Almanack for the fourth and final week of Late Summer, the third week of Sheep and Goat Breeding Moon. It is second full week of the Sun in Virgo.

In the last week of late summer, the final tier of wildflowers starts to open. White and violet asters, orange beggarticks, burr marigolds, tall goldenrod, zigzag goldenrod and Japanese knotweed come into bloom, blending with the brightest of the purple ironweed, yellow sundrops, blue chicory, golden touch-me-nots, showy coneflowers and great blue lobelia.

Hickory nutting season opens as sweet-corn time winds down. Burrs from tick trefoil stick to your stockings when you wander off the trail. Lizard's tail drops its leaves into the creeks and sloughs. Beside the deer paths of the forests, the undergrowth is tattered and cluttered with the remnants of the year.

The last fireflies are flickering. Red-headed woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, house wrens, scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, eastern bluebirds and black ducks migrate south.

Still, deep in the woods, the late wildflowers of this year coincide with the first growth of second spring, actually the first days of next spring. March’s henbit comes up in the garden. Wood mint puts out new stalks. Watercress revives in the sloughs. Next May's sweet rockets and next July’s avens send up fresh basal leaves. Scattered violets flower. Sweet Cicely sends out its foliage again. Sedum reappears, lanky from its canopied summer.

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the first week of early fall. In the meantime, even as the year retreats toward autumn, look for its subtle signs of spring.

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Bill Felker has been writing nature columns and almanacs for regional and national publications since 1984. His Poor Will’s Almanack has appeared as an annual publication since 2003. His organization of weather patterns and phenology (what happens when in nature) offers a unique structure for understanding the repeating rhythms of the year.