Poor Will's Almanack: August 6 - 12, 2019

As Late Summer begins, all the katydids sing after sundown. They call out the close of the Dog Days, and even though heat often lingers, the rhythm of the season has shifted, its tones have been altered, colors and sounds and scents all pointing to fall. Migration clucking among the robins increases. Some days, there is a long and steady cardinal song before sunrise, then silence. Hummingbirds, wood ducks, Baltimore orioles and purple martins start to disappear south; their departure marks a quickening in the approach of Early Fall. The first yellow jackets in the windfall apples and peaches and plums, the appearance of red stonecrop, white snakeroot, and boneset flowers, the fading of the cottonwoods combine now with all the other endings and beginnings to accelerate the year, building momentum with an accumulation of more and more events. Black walnut foliage is thinning, foretaste of the great leafdrop to come. Locust leaves turn brown, damaged by leaf miners. Violet Joe Pye weed