THE SUNSHINE OF OUR LIVES

             

Carolina blue sky with cirrus clouds

            The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning, with a pleasant north-northeasterly breeze. Oh, it won’t last, but it’s made for a welcome change from 137% humidities. The clear air sparkles with the first hints of autumn coming, the light visibly slanting as the sun lines up with the equator. Yellowed poplar leaves above browning bracken ferns hug the ditches along Rt. 133, hinting at imminent change. Closer to home, working in the garden transforms from a sweaty chore to purest joy.

How the sun appears to travel

across the sky during the

autumnal equinox

             Once the initial thrill of turning off the air-conditioner for whole days at a time subsides, however, the melancholy side of my nature whispers that the sunlit hours begin to decrease in earnest as we move inexorably toward autumnal equinox. Since I find intellectual activity soothing, I did some research to pin down the sine wave that day-lengths follow over the course of a year on Oak Island.

           

          Sunrise to sunset, our seven longest days in June run 14 hours and 25 minutes long. Winter solstice, on December 21 this year, logs only nine hours and 53 minutes of sunshine; the five days on either side of solstice clock in one minute longer. The graph below depicts day-lengths on the winter and summer solstices, vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and the four cross-quarter days of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain, pronounced “sou(as in south)-EEN.”

Please click on this to make it readable

            Why mention the cross-quarters? (Don't know what a cross-quarter is? See the "Things Are Looking Up" post from August 13, 2011.) Despite their medieval, New-Age, wiccan and pagan associations, those dates have real as well as symbolic meaning for Northern hemisphere gardeners, celebrating key transition points in the cycle of cultivation:

 

 

 the first stirrings of new life; 

Beltane

 

planting crops;

 

first harvest; 

 

 

and final harvest.

             

            Still feeling a little blue, I moved on to the U.S. Naval Observatory’s sunrise/sunset chart. The next graph resulted from plotting day-lengths from another angle.

Again, click for readability (if not legibility: see below)

            Okay, we’re done with graphs. Those colored inks don’t erase as well as pencil does.

Plus I feel better now. Sure, the amount of sunlight we get each day is shrinking now, but it’ll stretch out again soon. Soon? You bet. Labor Day’s gone, so that means Halloween lurks around the corner (as a visit to any store will attest); Thanksgiving and Christmas won’t be far behind. After winter solstice, we start the sunlight upswing again.

Summer solstice graphic

Winter solstice graphic

There's no good reason for the above graphics. I just think they're pretty.

Ah, reassuring cycles.

*****

             

            Now for something completely different.

            At the top of my bedside reading stack is Simon Garfield's fascinating Just My Type: A Book about Fonts. You may think the shapes of letters rank far down on the list of influential factors in your life, but you'd be wrong. Readability versus legibility issues aside, fonts make texts feel purposeful or playful, emotional or detached, scholarly or goofy, formal or informal, quaint or modern, with-it or stuffy, straightforward or fussy, serious or inane, even male or female. Take a minute to really look at the nine examples below. Which one appeals most to your eye? Are you a serif or sans serif aficionado? Have any clue as to why or why not? Or why a movement exists to ban breezy and conversational-looking Comic Sans? 

TIMES NEW ROMAN

            The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning. 

 ARIAL

            The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning.

BOOKMAN OLD STYLE

The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning.

CALIBRI

            The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning.

CENTURY GOTHIC

            The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning.

 

COMIC SANS

          The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning.  

GARAMOND

            The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning.

TAHOMA

          The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning.

TREBUCHET

          The fall season’s first burst of open-window weather arrived Monday morning.

           

            As one striving for publication, I stick primarily to Times New Roman for the work I send out into the world. Just My Type may move me to branch out and forge some new neural pathways, which is always a good thing, if it doesn't require further graph manufacture.

            Thanks for dropping by. (Whaddya think?)

                                                                                    Kathy

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP

Christopher Reeve as Superman

            Look!

           Up in the sky!

            It’s a bird!

            It’s a plane! It’s… 

No, not him.

            Because August is kind of a blah time on the ground, let’s raise our perspective. So… Look! Up in the sky!  It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s the Full Sturgeon Moon!

Full Sturgeon Moon rising
over Fishers Island, NY,
August 17, 2008
as taken by Sky-Guy 

            In Hindi, it’s called Narali Poornima or Raksha Bandhan. The Buddhists know it as Nikini Poya. Also known to Native Americans as the Green Corn, Grain, Red, Lightning and/or Dog Moon, the Sturgeon Moon is so called because Algonquian tribes found sturgeon in the Great Lakes easiest to catch at this time, presumably because they (the fish, not the Indians) were spawning. Regardless of what you call it, August’s full moon rose at 2:57 pm EDT today (August 13), just in time to spoil viewing of one of the best meteor showers of the year.

              

The Perseids over Stonehenge  

            The Perseid meteor shower brings back fond memories for Tim and me: we spent the end of our first date counting streaks of light raining down over Cascade Lake in the Adirondacks. Emanating from Earth’s annual pass through the debris stream of the Swift-Tuttle comet—which, in case you’re interested, orbits the sun every 133 years—the radiants (astronomer-speak for meteor “heads”) seem to originate from the constellation Perseus; hence the name. While probably the best-known of all recurring meteor shower events, the Perseids are only one of nine shows each year. I spent a good bit of this morning lost in the Science section of the online Christian Science Monitor. Follow the link to discover fascinating meteor shower lore.

            A factoid I just learned: a meteor shower becomes a meteor storm when the flaming projectiles blaze into view at more than 1000 per hour. Pretty cool, huh? If you’re not a satellite or in an orbiting spacecraft, obviously.



Comet Elenin

            Turns out comets are not the rare things I assumed them to be. Apparently inner space is chockablock with them. Why, in August alone, Comet Garrard was visible on the 2^nd; Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova (say that three times, fast) streaks past on the 16^th; and Comet Elenin, supposedly the agent of Earth’s destruction, will be visible to the naked eye by the end of the month as it passes three million miles wide of us. Too bad for all of you Mayan-calendar end-times conspiracy buffs out there.



The Celtic Wheel of the Seasons

            August always stirs my interest in the heavens because it’s a busy time, astronomically speaking. The month starts off with the cross-quarter holiday of Lammas. Cross-quarters are the celestial mid-points between the solstices and the equinoxes. The druids call it Lughnasadh (lew-NAH-sah), when pagans (and farmers) celebrate the first harvests of the growing season. “Dancing at Lughnasa,” a lovely slice-of-life movie of a rural family in 1930s Ireland, gives a flavor of the modern festival.

(For your edification, August 1 is the only cross-quarter day not co-opted by the Christian religion. The other three are:

·         February 1, pagan Imbolc (IM-bolk), the festival of fire. It became Candlemas, the feast of the presentation of the Christ-child at the Temple;

·         May 1, Beltane or May Day, a celebration of fertility and spring planting. This one morphed into Mary’s Day; and

·        November 1, Samhain (sew-EEN), the end-of-harvest party. The church celebrates All Hallows and All Souls instead, the days of the dead.       




Where to look for Jupiter

             Lest you worry that the crisp days and cool nights of autumn are upon us, fear not: the dead middle of meteorological summer fell on August 7. We have lots more miserable, hot, humid days to enjoy.

Besides the Sturgeon Moon, the Perseids and the comets, the August sky reveals additional celestial wonders to those in the Northern Hemisphere who know where and when to look. For most of August, Saturn sets in the southwest as evening twilight fades. If you have a telescope, you’ll get a good look at its rings and Titan, the planet’s largest moon. Saturn goes down just as the giant planet Jupiter rises in the east. The four largest of its 63 (and counting) moons—Callisto, Europa, Ganymeade and Io, collectively called the Galilean moons for Galileo, who first spotted them—should be visible with binoculars. On the 22^nd, take your binocs with you to some dark venue for a shot at actually seeing Neptune, just winding up its first solar orbit since its discovery in 1846. It’ll appear only as a tiny blue dot, but think of the bragging rights! And Sky-Guy urges everyone not to miss the summertime Milky Way, running from northeast to southwest around midnight. Best viewing is after the moon’s last quarter on the 21^st. “In particular,” he writes, “look for the ‘Great Rift’ that cleaves the galaxy in two from the center of the Summer Triangle down to the southern constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius… I can’t think of a more relaxing way to spend a clear summer evening than being lost in that immensity.”



The summertime Milky Way
with the Great Rift visible
(photo by Mike Hankey)

 

Where to look for Neptune











While taking in the celestial sights this month, consider this: in analyzing the composition of meteorites found in Australia and Antarctica, scientists found adenine and guanine, two of the nucleobases that make up terrestrial DNA. While they didn’t isolate any thymine or cytosine (the other pair of bases), they did discover two “nucleobase analogs” new to science. Read the linked Christian Science Monitor article, “Are We All Extraterrestrials? Scientists Discover Traces of DNA in Space” and ponder the immensity of that.

As the late Jack Horkheimer used to say, “Keep looking up!”

And thanks for dropping by.

        Kathy, Mr. Spock, and the Squeeze Toy Aliens from "Toy Story"  

"You have saved our lives.
We are eternally grateful."


 

"Live long and prosper."







P.S.--For more information, go to http://www.skymaps.com/ and www.Space.com/12576-skywatching-events-august-2011.html.                                                            

APRIL WRAP-UP

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

                        T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

            April has certainly been cruel to Arkansas and Alabama this year. Our thoughts, sympathy and best wishes for a speedy recovery from the unrecoverable go out to all the latest victims of climate change. Why is it that tornados so seldom flatten the neighborhoods of those better able to absorb the losses? Almost gives credence to conspiracy theorists’ claims that weather is controlled by the government at the behest of its handlers, Wall Street and the military.

The freely seeding
Carolina petunia
(Ruellia carolina)

            From without and from within, the lucky Fitzes dodged devastation. I took advantage of some mandated down-time to engage in my favorite form of therapy, weeding. I cleared three-quarters of the back garden and down the south-side path, pulling out over 1300 self-seeded Carolina petunias (Ruellia carolina). The rogue passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) count is only up to 32, but the season’s just getting started. Two others appeared in places I actually want them to be, on the outdoor shower’s wall and at the base of our ‘Muskogee’ crape myrtle. These are the ones I monitor for the National Phenology Network. (See the February 2^nd post, “For the Birds,” for more information.)

*****

            Beltane falls on Sunday this year. The forecast calls for perfect spring weather, so Tim and I plan to celebrate with the other local druids. Oh, wait—we’re the only ones. So I guess he’ll paint while I putter in the yard.

            “Beltane” not ringing any bells? Sky-Guy, our friend from the U.S. Naval Observatory, says the ancient Celtic cross-quarter holiday (don’t forget to pay your rents, all you serfs) marks the end of boreal winter and the commencement of the growing season with bonfires, fertility rites and festivities that gave rise to the word “mayhem.” Christianity usurped and sanitized it into tamer “May Day.” Americans gave the druids some of their own back by designating the last Friday in April as Arbor Day.

            Here in southeastern North Carolina, milestones of spring come and go with unbecoming haste. Mid-February to mid-March—daffs bloom: check. February 20—sweet Williams and snaps rebloom: check. March 5—first biting sand gnats attack: check. March 28—windows open all night: check. April 8—first outdoor shower: check. April 21—first local strawberries for sale: check. April 25—air-conditioner turned on for the first time in 2011: check. April 27—cloyingly sweet-scented wild privet in full bloom: check. April 29—first batch of South Carolina peaches: whoa! First peaches? In April?

            The kid at Port City Produce reports the supplier said this crop is the earliest he’s ever harvested by two weeks. Sure, the fruits are small and hard as bricks, but their color is good and they smell peachy. Once they ripen, I’ll let you know how they taste.

*****

Now that I’m making a conscious effort to eat locally and in season, it’s winter’s dearth of fruit I feel most keenly. Once my small cache of frozen berries was gone, the fruit famine set in. But now the local you-pick strawberry places are opening up, which will be followed by the you-pick blueberry places, which will be followed by the wild blackberries ripening at a place I’m won’t disclose. The peaches will get bigger and better throughout the summer. The melons reach perfection in July. I am so ready to be in fruit-hog heaven.

The (nearly) weed-free path
on the south side of our house
(photographed at dusk)

            On the home front, the serviceberries grow a little larger every day. Soon the bird netting will be out to give me a fighting chance at part of the harvest. I noticed there are four new baby serviceberry (Amelanchier x grandiflora) bushes near the mother plant. I’ll dig them up and spread them out into a serviceberry grove.

            Both the ‘Chandler’ and groundcover strawberries are flowering and setting fruit. The seven new blueberry bushes produced about 20 flowers so far, but I wasn’t expecting much in the way of a crop this year. Ditto for the ‘Ouachita’ blackberry whips.

            The scuppernong grape vine I transplanted from the lot next door two years ago looks like it may do something this year too. That would be an unexpected bonus.



The pea patch



            As for vegetables, the peas have pods and the potato plants look great: should we harvest any actual potatoes, however, remains to be seen. I thinned and rearranged the carrot, beet and onion shoots into neat rows a few weeks ago… just before Roger the three-pawed raccoon moved in nearby and went on a digging spree. Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to pot up many of the thinnings (I’ve mentioned I have an awful time killing off vegetable seedlings, haven’t I?), so there are extras to fill the gaps.

            My surviving seed-starts continue to survive, if not thrive. Five cultivars of tomatoes, four of them heirloom; six of two cucumber varieties; and three of two different melons sprouted out on the potting table, plus all six ‘Snack Seed’ sunflowers. I broke down and bought three ‘Better Boy’ tomato and three sweet-pepper plants. The plan (haha) is to get them all in the ground this weekend. Well, we’ll see. It’s also time to get the beans in, now the nighttime temperatures stay between 55° and 65°.



            The hyacinth bean, moonflower and black-eyed susan vine starts are coming along, as are the ‘Spitfire’ nasturtiums. The outside hollyhock seeds did better than the inside ones, a lesson for next year. Two of the six pots of alyssum actually have tiny flowers—what a rush!

*****



The miracle poinsettia
(Who said miracles have to be pretty?)



            The houseplants that survived several months of my indoor tender mercies have moved outside now, to the great relief of everyone concerned. Even the ratty-looking poinsettia clings to life five months on, truly a Christmas miracle. The dahlia I brought in—the one that immediately shriveled up—surprised us all by producing a new green leaf this week: it’s what I consider the greatest triumph of the annual overwintering crapshoot. Thank goodness that’s over with until next November.



*****

            No progress to report on any of the new beds. But it is Beltane weekend: maybe something magic will happen. Keep a good thought for me.

            Thanks for dropping by, y’all.



                                                                                    Kathy