Saturday’s full moon begins shift to chillier than average days
Oct. 8-14
Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night sheweth knowledge.
— Psalm XIX
The first week of middle fall
The Moon, the Stars, the Shooting Stars and the Sun
The Blackbirds in the Cornfields Moon becomes completely full on October 9 at 1:55 p.m. Rising in the evening and setting in the morning, this moon is overhead in the middle of the night.
At the start of October, the day’s length is about 11 hours and 45 minutes. At the end of the month, the day is only ten hours and 30 minutes long.
The Pleiades, and the Hyades of Taurus lie on the eastern horizon well after dark, announcing middle autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. Nonetheless, summer’s Milky Way is still almost directly overhead, and June’s Corona Borealis has still not set by 10:00 p.m.
The Draconid Meteor Shower takes place between October 6 – 10. Only a few meteors will be visible with this shower but look for it along the northern horizon in Draco.
Weather trends
Average temperatures have plunged six degrees throughout the country since early September. Skies remain generally clear, but the afternoons are almost always cool. Full moon on October 9, so close to lunar perigee on October 4, is likely to make the days and nights even chillier than average. This time is often favorable for harvest, but precipitation increases (along with the chances for storms and snow in the North) as the October 13 system approaches.
Zeitgebers: Events in nature that tell the time of year
Goldenrod is seeding now, pods of the eastern burning bush are open, hawthorn berries redden, wild grapes are purple. Streaks of scarlet appear on the oaks, shades of pink on the dogwoods. The surviving ashes show red or gold; the catalpas and the cottonwoods blanch. Shagbark hickories, tulip trees, sassafras, elms, locusts and sweet gums change to full yellow, merge with the swelling orange of the maples.
As the canopy thins above the garden, the tall sedums begin to relinquish their petals, and autumn crocuses die back. August’s jumpseeds are jumping, touch-me-nots popping, thimble plants unraveling. The toothed leaves of beggarticks darken overnight.
Cabbage butterflies become more reckless now in their search for nectar. Aphids disappear in the chilly nights. Cicadas die. Japanese beetles complete their season. Daddy longlegs no longer hunt the undergrowth. Damselflies are rare along the rivers now, and darners have left their suburban ponds.
In the field and garden
Harvest honey from your hives (leaving plenty for the bees). Also bring in pumpkins and winter squash before the weather gets much colder.
The darkening moon after the 9th favors planting root crops, setting spring flower bulbs and transplanting perennials. Plants and bulbs intended for spring forcing should be placed in light soil now and stored in a place where temperatures remain cool (but not freezing).
The fields may be regreening now with secondary growth and fall varieties. Provide plenty of free choice hay to livestock in order reduce the chance they will gorge themselves on fresh growth.
After the leaves come down from each of your trees, provide fertilizer that will gradually feed their roots through the late fall and winter.
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) lies in the 40s and 50s this week. October’s foliage color peak has been shown to temporarily change the brain chemistry of people who suffer from seasonal affective disorder. The brilliance of autumn leaves can counter depression and promote an optimistic view on life.
There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this.
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1859
“I found myself in a meadow... and this was a beautiful green meadow with beautiful flowers, beautiful colors, lit with this glorious, radiant light, like no light we’ve ever seen .... And wonder of wonders, I realized I was seeing the inner light of all growing things...a gentle, inner glow that shone from each and every plant. Overhead, the sky was clear and blue, the light infinitely more beautiful than any light we knew.”
From a near-death experience description by Jane Smith in After by Dr. Bruce Greyson
Numerous sources document the “near-death” experiences of people who have clinically died and then have come back or have been brought back to life. In 1977, Professor Raymond Moody labeled the landscape that many experiencers describe as “The City of Light.”
According to Widdison and Lundahl in their “The Physical Environment in the City of Light,” ( Journal of Near-death Studies, Volume 11, Number 4) many of those who have a neardeath experience (NDE) describe the place to which they go as “a world of preternatural and ethereal beauty, with colors said to be unforgettable, a heavenly landscape in incredible detail... vegetation and flowers that are beautiful beyond description with every color in the rainbow.”
The more time I spend outside in nature, the more it seems to me that one might experience this paradise without entering the dangerous liminal zone between life and death. The physiological and psychological intensity of an NDE is certainly remarkable, but its power might be suggested by encountering the countless creatures of our own habitat.
Here in the first week of Middle Fall, simple wonders may overwhelm the senses of the beholder: golden sky at dawn and sunset, the infinite forms of clouds, the delicate wings of the rare swallowtail butterfly, the late blossoms of the asters and the goldenrod, the last calls of the robins and the cardinals and the doves, the soaring swallows, the gathering geese, the heavenly choir of crickets and katydids on warmer nights, the sun through still verdant leaves that project the hope of spring.
The beatific vision of the City of Light lies all around us, bridging us, as the need may be, to the other side, or simply revealing the truth: “There is no other land, no other life but this, or the like of this.”