Poor Will's Almanack: December 3 - 9, 2019

Yesterday, the sun reached its earliest setting time throughout much of the country. When sunset reaches its earliest time of the year, the second bloom of forsythia flowers typically ends, witch hazel blossoms wither, and the last foliage of the beeches, the willows, pears, cypresses and oaks comes down. Now the asters, milkweed and boneset, virgin’s bower, winterberry, honeysuckle and bittersweet set their seeds more quickly. Gauges of passage appear across the ground, the Osage fruits decaying, sometimes opened and scattered by squirrels, the hulls of black walnuts pocked and stained, heaps of leaves darkening, settling, contracting, dissolving. In the darkest evenings of the year, Lenten roses gradually show their buds as crocus and snowdrops pierce the soft mulch and hold immune to cold beneath the snow. Sap quivers in the maples every thaw. Migrations overlap, the last sandhill cranes high over the first new bluebirds. The long nights urge the foxes to mate. Owls lay out their