Rising adrenaline, hormonal activity occurs in autumn

Everywhere in the countryside there is a glimmer of autumn reds. Hawthorn bushes are laden with crimson berries, while the clusters of black elderberries are surrounded with vinous red leaves. On brambles, the ripening berries are a glossy purple and some of the leaves are scarlet. The lower leaves of docks are also turning bright red.

In the skies

— Derwent May

The moon: The Sweet Peach Moon wanes until it becomes the Apple Cider Moon on Sept. 14 at 9:40 p.m. Rising in the middle of the night and setting in the middle of the day, this moon passes overhead in the morning.

The sun: The sun’s apparent descent continues at the rate of approximately one degree every two days, reaching more than 95% of the way to equinox on Sept. 15.

The planets: Mars sets too close to sundown for easy viewing. Jupiter rises in the evening in Aries, is visible throughout the night.

The stars: At bedtime find Perseus coming up out of the northeast, the Great Square filling the eastern sky, Cygnus the Swan overhead, Hercules and the Corona Borealis in the west, and the Big Dipper low in the northwest. Taurus and the Pleiades are up by midnight, and they stay in the dark sky until Middle Spring when their disappearance coincides with opening of tulips. At dawn, Orion is almost due south, the Great Square is setting, and Regulus, the planting star of April is climbing in front of the sun.

Weather trends

Early fall arrives in the second week of September. Temperatures, which began to cool slightly at the pivot time of Aug. 10, decline more noticeably. Average highs fall below 80, and normal nighttime lows move below 60 until the second week of next June. Chances of highs in the 90s hold at only 10% each day this week, the first time that has happened since the end of May. Highs in the cold 60s occur another 10% of the time (and there is a the possibility of 50s for the first time since June 4), with 70s and 80s sharing the remaining 80%. Frost is rare at this stage of September, but chances of a light freeze increase to 10% on Sept. 13 and 14 as the third high pressure system of the month comes through.

The natural calendar

Among the many signs of approaching autumn, the maturing of the jumpseed plant is one of the more dependable. When its flowers have turned to brittle seeds, then the last tier of wildflowers starts to open throughout the country. White and violet asters, orange beggarticks and bur marigolds, late field goldenrod and zigzag goldenrod come into bloom, blending with the last of the purple ironweed, yellow sundrops, blue chicory, golden touch-me-nots, showy coneflowers and great blue lobelias.

Field and garden

The dark moon favors the seeding of winter grains and green manure crops. Test the soil and make corrective lime and fertilizer applications for autumn plantings. In a typical season, soybeans have turned on a third of all the farms, and the harvest has begun. A fourth to half of the corn is mature, and about a fourth has been cut for silage. When the corn harvest ends, vaccinate for enterotoxemia the lambs you let run in the cornfields.

Your herd and flock can graze an area close now; then you can fertilize and seed those fields in early spring with a legume. Watch for the pasture to shift towards its autumn composition as the number of plants available for browse starts to diminish and the rate of growth begins to slow. Schedule fall pasture improvements as soon as possible.

Mind and body

Since the hot weather is typically on the wane and the skies normally remain summer clear, the incidence of seasonal affective disorder is low this week. Continue to take advantage of rising adrenaline and other hormonal activity that often occurs in autumn to accomplish what you put off during the dog days of summer. And take a little extra time to just sit or stand and watch the landscape.

Journal

This week the asters have bloomed in the garden, the white, small-flowered ones and the large, purple New England asters. The fleabane is lush among the mums. The golden coneflowers are twothirds gone, but the blue spiderwort keeps blossoming, its second time this year. Most yarrow heads are black. The very last purple loosestrife disappeared today.

A shower of black walnut leaves brought me a sequence of impressions that occupied my mind for most of the day. The images included the elm trees outside the window of my boyhood room, my father working in the yard, my mother in the kitchen, the smell of bread baking, the warmth from forced air heat, walks to school in the cold, hunting squirrels with my new rifle, feelings of comfort and regret, nostalgia, sadness, contentment. I saw my autobiography in falling leaves: courtships, incidents with friends and lovers, flashes of success and failure, twinges of old restlessness, old longing.

I didn’t hear cardinals calling today, but blue jays were loud this afternoon. Crows passed through the yard, stayed in the back locusts for half an hour in the late morning, left for the afternoon; then a flock of about twenty flew over just after eight o’clock this evening.