Mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks have reached their summer strength

Vast overhanging meadow-lands of rain,

And drowsy dawns, and noons when golden grain

Nods in the sun, and lazy truant boys

Drift ever listlessly down the day,

Too full of joy to rest, and dreams to play.

— James Whitcomb Riley

The moon and the sun The fourth week of early summer

After full moon on the 14th, the Hummingbird Moon wanes throughout the period, entering its final quarter June 20 at 10:11 p.m. Rising in the evening and setting in the morning, this moon shines throughout the night, favoring nighttime for fishing.

Solstice occurs June 21 at 4:14 a.m. The sun enters Cancer at the same time. The sun holds steady at its highest noontime height above the horizon (a declination of +23.26) for four days, June 19–23, after which it slowly begins to descend toward December’s winter solstice.

Weather Trends

Between June 15-19, average temperatures climb their final degrees throughout the nation, reaching their summer peak near solstice. This month’s Supermoon may bring rain, however, leaving cool evenings in its wake. The June 23 high-pressure system is typically cool and dry, and it is often followed by some of the sunniest days of all the year. As the next June front approaches, however, the benign effects of the June 23 system can be expected to give way to thunderstorms.

Zeitgebers: Events in nature that tell the time of year

As early summer deepens, the days are the longest of the year, and mulberries and black raspberries are sweetest. Milkweed beetles look for milkweed flowers on the longest days; giant cecropia moths emerge. The first monarch butterfly caterpillars eat the carrot tops. This year’s ducklings and goslings are nearly full grown.

Damselflies and daddy longlegs are everywhere in brambles along the rivers when mulberries and black raspberries come in. Mosquitoes,

chiggers, and ticks have reached their summer strength in the deep woods. Long, black cricket hunters hunt crickets in the garden.

Two out of three parsnips, angelicas and hemlocks are going to seed. Multiflora roses and Japanese honeysuckles are dropping petals. But wingstem and tall coneflower stalks are five feet high, and Virginia creeper is flowering. Canadian thistles and nodding thistles are at their best. Blackberries have set fruit. The very first trumpet vines sport bright red-orange trumpets. The first yuccas and the first great mullein come into bloom.

In the field and garden

As summer heat builds up, watch for screw worm and blow fly eggs in sores or dung locks on your livestock. Timely clipping, shearing and dipping can help keep your animals from these pests as well as from ticks, lice and scab mites.

Pick summer blueberries as they darken this month. (Very often berries are fattest at full and new moon.) But don’t forget the wild mulberry and black raspberry crops. In the lawn, chinch bugs hatch; be sure to water heavily to counteract their damage. In your trees, look for tent caterpillars.

If you have livestock, consider growing dill (to increase milk yields), fennel (for fevers and constipation and all eye ailments), anise (for digestive ailments).

Adolescent coyotes are out hunting now. Check fences, have the guard animals in place and bright night lighting.

Continue to check your lambs for constipation. Castor oil and milk of magnesia are old standby remedies.

Pasture rotation, regular testing and worming are among the very best ways to fight worms in your livestock. Placing raspberries along your hedgerows offers a simple way to offer healthful browsing material for your livestock.

The high noon of the year has arrived, marked by the opening of goose molting season and the commencement of corn borer season.

When elderberry flowers turn to fruit, dig garlic before the heads break apart. Also take time to clear and reseed the early spring garden area.

Barley and honey, mixed with water and simmered for an hour, can soothe inflammations of the throat and stomach, and may reduce coughing in humans as well as in animals.

If your animals have been out in the sun for a long period of time, and they are starting to pant and are unsteady on their feet, they could have sunstroke.

When yuccas flower, plant the vegetable garden for August and September harvests. Many people now plant turnips and beets for fall harvest and grazing.

Mind and body

The S.A.D. Stress Index — which measures the forces thought to be associated with Seasonal Affective Disorder on a scale from 1 to 100 — reaches 30 on full moon day, but then falls into the harmless single digits on June 19. It remains at its lowest level of the year throughout the remainder of the month.

Journal

Solstice marks the end of early summer in the Miami Valley, but time is also space; movement and distance can take the season backwards or forwards, allowing what was and still will be to ride the hinge of the sun’s declination. North in Maine, azaleas and columbine are still bright. Lupines hold in Bar Harbor. Foxglove and privet are budding in Bangor, strawberries just ripening. Through the valleys of Vermont, the wheat is deep green wheat (golden-brown, almost ready to cut along the Ohio River). Parsnips are opening in New Hampshire as they go to seed in Tennessee. In upstate New York, catalpas are still flowering, and peonies are still in bloom.

The flora of the upper Midwest reaffirms the late spring and early summer of the Northeast. The blossoms of mock orange are still fragrant in Minneapolis. Multiflora roses and the petals of blackberries repeat Cincinnati May. Cottonwood cotton is drifting across the arboretum in Madison, Wisconsin. The thistles are stronger, the hemlock fresher, cattails more delicate and flushed with pollen all across the northern plains.

West in the Rocky Mountains, lupines are in full bloom at 4,000 feet, lilacs and early iris are coming in above 6,000 feet. Southern Ohio April appears in fields of dandelions and spring beauties at 7,000 feet. At 8,000 feet, the heartleaf arnica, like a yellow bloodroot, pushes Middle Atlantic time almost to the end of March.

Then down toward the Pacific, the landscape collapses forward toward a Miami Valley June. From Tillamook to the ocean, cow parsnips, yarrow, moth mullein, yellow sweet cover, meadow goat’s beard, milkweed and great mullein line the roads.