Poor Will's Almanack
167 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 24 ratingsBill Felker's almanack for Southwest Ohio and beyond features observations and reflections on the natural world.
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Episodes
Poor Will's Almanack: September 15 -21, 2020
September 15, 2020 10:48 - 3 minutes - 1.6 MBPoor Will’s Almanack for the second week of early fall, the first week of the Winter Grain Planting Moon. It is the final week of the Sun in Virgo.
Poor Will's Almanack: September 8 - 14, 2020
September 08, 2020 10:46 - 3 minutes - 3.06 MBPoor Will’s Almanack for the first week of early fall, the fourth week of Sheep and Goat Breeding Moon. It is third full week of the Sun in Virgo.
Poor Will's Almanack: September 1 - 7, 2020
September 01, 2020 10:46Poor Will’s Almanack for the fourth and final week of Late Summer, the third week of Sheep and Goat Breeding Moon. It is second full week of the Sun in Virgo.
Poor Will's Almanack: August 25 - 31, 2020
August 25, 2020 13:59Poor Will’s Almanack for the third week of Late Summer, the second week of the Sheep and Goat Breeding Moon. It is first full week of the Sun in Virgo.
Poor Will's Almanack: August 18 - 24, 2020
August 18, 2020 10:45Poor Will’s Almanack for the second week of Late Summer, the first week of Sheep and Goat Breeding Moon. It is the transition time of the Sun to Virgo.
Poor Will's Almanack: August 11 – 17, 2020
August 11, 2020 10:44Poor Will’s Almanack for the first week of Late Summer, the fourth week of Tomato and Sweet Corn Moon. It is the fourth week of the Sun in Leo.
Poor Will's Almanack: August 4 - 10, 2020
August 04, 2020 10:45Poor Will’s Almanack for the seventh and final week of Deep Summer, the third week of Tomato and Sweet Corn Moon. It is the third week of the Sun in Leo.
Poor Will's Almanack: July 28 – August 3, 2020
July 28, 2020 10:44Poor Will’s Almanack for the sixth week of Deep Summer, the second week of the Tomato and Sweet Corn Moon. It is the second week of the Sun in Leo.
Poor Will's Almanack: July 21 - 27, 2020
July 21, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesIn his essay, “The Temporality of the Landscape,” archeologist Tim Ingold states that “Ecosystems contain as many ‘times’ as they do objects, processes, or creatures, probably more.”
Poor Will's Almanack: July 14 - 20, 2020
July 14, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesBy the 100th day of the year, April 10th, the landscape has entered its most benign period, even in the coldest years. When the fields are dry enough, farmers plant the first corn. Winter wheat is bright green. Robins sing at 6:00 a.m., cardinals at 6:25 (Eastern Daylight Time).
Poor Will's Almanack: July 7 - 13, 2020
July 07, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesIn his Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, Jonathan White considers the theories that tides are the result of not only cosmic but of microcosmic forces: “Everything is in flux, he says. “Tides are reactions of the sea to the position of the moon and the sun. Tides are also waves that are formed from the vibration of the cosmos. Everything in the universe has a natural tendency to vibrate: flowers, wind, steel, planets, mountains, the inside of an ear."
Poor Will's Almanack: June 30 – July 6, 2020
June 30, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesI have grown older with a house and garden in the same place for 40 years. I have outlasted shrubbery, trees, perennial plantings and neighbors.
Poor Will's Almanack: June 23 – 29, 2020
June 23, 2020 10:44 - 4 minutesIn cultural and geographic attribution statements, people often recognize that the land they occupy has been taken away from other groups.
Poor Will's Almanack: June 16 - 22, 2020
June 16, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesSolstice occurs on June 22nd at 4:44 p.m. and before and after that time, the sun holds steady at its highest noontime height above the horizon for four days, June 20 - 23, after which it slowly begins to descend towards December's winter solstice.
Poor Will's Almanack: June 9 - 15, 2020
June 09, 2020 10:45 - 3 minutesLately, much has been made of the concept of a tipping point. Simply put, such an idea refers to an accumulation of matter, events or thoughts that builds until it causes an irreversible change.
Poor Will's Almanack: June 2 - 8, 2020
June 02, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesEarly this spring, I was working in my greenhouse, pinching back stalky plants, when I accidentally broke off a long stem of a geranium plant. I placed that stalk in a tall, clear vase half full of water and put on the kitchen table.
Poor Will's Almanack: May 26 – June 1, 2020
May 26, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesIf this were the year 2021 instead of 2020, the seventeen-year cicadas would be emerging all around the park close to where I live. Sixteen years ago, I found them after work when I stopped by the woods and made my way along the path above the river.
Poor Will's Almanack: May 19 - 25, 2020
May 19, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesThis week brings on the collapse of late spring, the accumulation of leafing and flowering overloading the landscape until it is overcome by summer.
Poor Will's Almanack: May 12 - 18, 2020
May 12, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesThis week brings blooming season for sweet Cicely and May apples all along the 40th Parallel throughout the East and Middle Atlantic Region. Mayfly Season begins along the rivers and lakeshores. Weevil Season comes in throughout alfalfa fields. Thrush Season, Baltimore Oriole Season, Catbird Season and Scarlet Tanager Season come to the undergrowth. It’s Bullfrog Season in the swamp, Gray Tree Frog season in the trees and Spitbug Season in the parsnips.
Poor Will's Almanack: May 5 - 11, 2020
May 05, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesThe center of Late Spring is already thickening the canopy over early gardens. Sycamores, Osage, cottonwoods and oaks are leafing out, and white mulberries and buckeyes blossom.
Poor Will's Almanack: April 28 – May 4, 2020
April 28, 2020 10:48 - 3 minutesSome days, I take stock of all the things I find happening in the yard. When I do that, the process seems to stop time, placing it in boxes of measurements and names.
Poor Will's Almanack: April 21 - 27, 2020
April 21, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesI recently came across my old copy of the Bach flower remedies and, browsing through its pages, I was once again attracted to the ideas of the early 20th century homeopath, Dr. Edward Bach, who believed that nature was the source of all healing, that the essence of certain plants and flowers could, together with the right attitude and the body’s own immune system, help to manage disease.
Poor Will's Almanack: April 14 – 20, 2020
April 14, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesHere on the cusp of April, one might use any number of seasonal markers to imagine the progress of Middle Spring. Beginning with daffodils today in the Ohio Valley, a person could, for instance, say that the road to May was really the road south past fresh honeysuckle leaves, dandelion blossoms, and forsythia flowers, past the blossoming pear trees, redbuds, and crab apple trees of the Carolinas, then the open dogwoods of Georgia, and ending finally with azaleas in New Orleans.
Poor Will's Almanack: April 7 - 13, 2020
April 07, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesBy this week of the year, butterflies can emerge on the warmest days, and I am on the lookout for a particular orange butterfly, a Polygonia, to be exact.
Poor Will's Almanack: March 31 - April 6, 2020
March 31, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesNow at the beginning of Middle Spring, when pollen covers the pussy willows, then honeysuckle, mock orange, privet, wild multiflora roses, lilac, black raspberry and coralberry leaves break out from their buds, and that is a signal for cornus mas and lungwort to flower and for mourning cloak butterflies and cabbage moths to navigate the warming days past equinox. A little later come the question-mark and tortoise-shell butterflies and then the white-spotted skippers.
Poor Will's Almanack: March 24 - 30, 2020
March 24, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesAs Early Spring comes to a close, then mourning cloak butterflies, the question marks, the tortoise shells and the cabbage butterflies come out, and when that happens, catfish are getting ready to feed in the rivers, and goldfinches are turning gold. The predawn chorus of birds begins near 6:00 a.m.
Poor Will's Almanack: March 17 - 23, 2020
March 17, 2020 10:44 - 3 minutesSo much has happened to prepare for equinox.
Poor Will's Almanack: March 10 - 16, 2020
March 10, 2020 11:44 - 2 minutes - 174 BytesI moved my desk to an east window last week. It faces a hedge that once was forsythia but now has been grown over by honeysuckle and Japanese honeysuckle vines. The shrubbery encroaches on the sidewalk, which parallels the street, and it is dense enough to block most traffic from view. It is also dense enough to be a haven for house sparrows, and the other afternoon, the snow was covering the hedge, and I sat and watched the sparrows flit from branch to branch, sometimes following one another...
Poor Will's Almanack: March 3 - 9, 2020
March 03, 2020 11:46 - 2 minutes - 175 BytesIt’s the third week of early spring, but when it really comes to spring, the number of the week or even the weather doesn’t move you closer to spring so much as what you see and hear. It’s your experience that leads you out of winter. The land sends up signs of color to guide you, first emerald green of fresh grass to catch the sun, then white of snowdrops and tiny-flowered bittercress and Lenten roses, the yellow of dandelions, the violet and gold of snow crocuses, sometimes deep purple of t...
Poor Will's Almanack: February 25 – March 2, 2020
February 25, 2020 15:15 - 3 minutes - 209 BytesNow it is possible that some listeners do not know about broody hens, and since this is clearly the month of the Broody Hen Moon, it may be helpful to discuss the subject here in the Almanack. So anyway, what IS a broody hen. A broody person may be thoughtful and unhappy, moody and melancholy. But in Chicken World, Well, a broody hen is one that doesn’t want to give up her eggs. She wants them to hatch. That would seem reasonable, and if a rooster is about, and if the owner wants chicks, the ...
Poor Will's Almanack: February 18 - 24, 2020
February 18, 2020 11:44 - 3 minutes - 209 BytesInstinctively summer is accepted as the normal condition of the earth, writes naturalist, Edwin Way Teale. Winter as the abnormal. Summer is ‘the way it should be.’ It is as though our minds subconsciously returned to some tropical beginning, some summer-filled Garden of Eden I thought of these lines I drove back to Ohio from a brief trip to the Florida Keys this past month. It wasn’t that the change was disheartening or surprising. I had made that trip dozens of times through the years, and ...
Poor Will's Almanack: February 11 - 17, 2020
February 11, 2020 11:44 - 3 minutes - 209 BytesI write this from Sarasota, Florida: Complete semi-tropical habitat, no sign of winter. Looking back over today’s daybook from home in Ohio, I see how all the notes reach south, look forward. The notations from the cold, Midwestern years are fragments of longing as well as projections, reachings toward, visualizing, collecting pieces of the puzzle of spring, knowing that the completion is only a matter of distance or circumstance or decision, realizing that the details of February – such as c...
Poor Will's Almanack: February 4 - 10, 2020
February 04, 2020 11:44 - 2 minutes - 179 BytesEven as the cold breaks the Groundhog Day thaw, many signs appear of the broader scope of the season, reminders of what to watch for and what to do. When the first fly gets in your house on a warm Late Winter day, then opossums and skunks wander the back roads at night. When the red tips of peonies push out just a little from the ground, then blue jays are courting and wild turkeys to are gathering in flocks. When red-winged blackbirds come to build their nests, then the maple sap should alre...
Poor Will's Almanack: January 28 – February 3 , 2020
January 28, 2020 11:44 - 3 minutes - 215 BytesOnce the leaves are down in the fall, I avoid looking at winter. I am always looking for spring, for the moment at which all the best of the year still lies ahead. Sometimes I think anticipation is better than fulfillment. Promises are better than what is promised. Hope is better than than what is hoped for. When dreams come true, they are over. Happily ever after is often better as a wish. The fantasy of snowdrops can last indefinitely. The tangibe snowdrops not so much. It’s not that I hold...
Poor Will's Almanack: January 21 - 27, 2020
January 21, 2020 11:44 - 3 minutes - 188 BytesThe Pussy Willow Cracking Moon becomes the new Lambing and Kidding Moon at 1:45 a.m. on January 24. This moon presides over the period during which most sheep and goats give birth. Complementing this surge in the farming year, the first week of the Lambing and Kidding Moon opens skunk cabbage in the swamps. The second week of this moon brings cardinals into song every morning about half an hour before dawn. By full moon time, doves join the cardinals, and maple sap runs in the maples. As the ...
Poor Will's Almanack: January 14 - 20, 2020
January 14, 2020 11:44 - 3 minutes - 188 BytesThe year seems to pause now, frozen in the middle of deep winter, but natural history and our own hope for spring continue to be the sum of our observations. Since there is no limit to what a person might watch and record, an endless winter is only in the eye of the beholder. Like every other season, winter accumulates, is the product of the sensations it causes, is only what we see it to be, is all that we see it to be. Even now, the landscape is part spring, part late fall, the grass greeni...
Poor Will's Almanack: January 7 - 13, 2020
January 07, 2020 11:44 - 3 minutes - 188 BytesThe rising of Orion after 9:00 p.m. continues to be the most dramatic event of an Deep Winter evening. The seven sisters, the Pleiades, and the constellation Taurus, precede it. Due north of Polaris, the Little Dipper hangs in the sky overhead before midnight. North-northeast, the Big Dipper hugs the horizon. Due east, Cancer has just come up. Due south, the gangly formations of Cetus, Fornax and Eridanus wander along the tree line. In the far west, Aquarius pushes Delphinus into the Pacific ...
Poor Will's Almanack: December 31 – January 6, 2019
December 31, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 209 BytesAlthough the character of an entire season is difficult to predict, particular periods of the winter are subject to lunar forces that affect tides as well as the severity of storms. The first major storm period of the New Year (after the New Year’s Eve weather) can be expected to occur between January 9 and 14, when the continent is subject to full moon as well as to perigee, the moon’s position closest to Earth. The next storm period arrives at the end of the January thaw with the new moon c...
Poor Will's Almanack: December 31, 2019 – January 6, 2020
December 31, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 209 BytesAlthough the character of an entire season is difficult to predict, particular periods of the winter are subject to lunar forces that affect tides as well as the severity of storms. The first major storm period of the New Year (after the New Year’s Eve weather) can be expected to occur between January 9 and 14, when the continent is subject to full moon as well as to perigee, the moon’s position closest to Earth. The next storm period arrives at the end of the January thaw with the new moon c...
Poor Will's Almanack: December 24 - 30, 2019
December 24, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 224 BytesEven as the cold deepens, the promises of the whole year ahead lie out before us in the names of its moons. Flollowing the last of December’s Silent Cricket Moon, December 26, 2019: The Pussy Willow Cracking Moon cracks the darkness of winter with occasional revelations of its soft catkins January 24: At the end of January, The Lambing and Kidding Moon starts the year for shepherds and goatherds as most lambs and kids are born. February 23: Late February brings The Broody Hen Moon , when hens...
Poor Will's Almanack: December 17 - 23, 2019
December 17, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 209 BytesAlmost all the leaves are down, the old year spent and scattered. Even as storms bring wind and snow to close this season, the defiant and prophetic buds of pussy willows grow fat, A new year is beginning. It is time to watch for spring. This is solstice week, the sun reaching its lowest point on the horizon, on December 22, hovering there before it begins to rise once more toward summer. Just one more week until start of Deep Winter Two more weeks until the tufted titmouse begins its mating ...
Poor Will's Almanack: December 10 - 16, 2019
December 10, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 188 BytesI wander into the fields and woods this soft and cloudy morning. Clover is keeping the paths green, along with some dandelions, some plantain. Wind rustles the dry grass and the brittle leaves. I can hear distant crows but no other birds for the first miles. Then the whinny of a robin as though it were frightened or had been attacked. Craneflies follow me up into High Prairie. Moss is still bright beside me, becomes the dominant green in the woods. A few red raspberry branches and a bank of h...
Poor Will's Almanack: December 3 - 9, 2019
December 03, 2019 16:13 - 3 minutes - 199 BytesYesterday, 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 deca...
Poor Will's Almanack: November 26 - December 2, 2019
November 26, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 188 BytesBy this point in the year, cricket song has quieted, and the silence of Early Winter offers a sound of solitude, an absence that opens space for reflection and renewal. The Silent Cricket Moon, like all the Moons between Scorpio and Pisces, can be cruel and challenging, but it also offers a context for personal centering, as well as for finishing the work of the year and preparing for the year ahead. While crickets sleep, the last leaves fall from woodland asters. Mice and voles find safety i...
Poor Will's Almanack: November 19 - 25, 2019
November 19, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 188 BytesMy interest in the weather began in 1972 with the gift of a barometer. My wife, Jeanie, gave the instrument to me when I was succumbing to the stress of school in Knoxville, Tennessee, and it became not only an escape from intense academic work, but the first step on the road to a different kind of awareness about the world. From the start, I was never content just to watch the barometric needle. I was fascinated by the alchemy of my charts and graphs that turned rain and Sun into visible pat...
Poor Will's Almanack: November 12 - 18, 2019
November 12, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 239 BytesGlobal projections are dire for the decades ahead, and for the region where I live in the Lower Midwest, it is likely that by 2030 summers will be a somewhat warmer and drier, springs a little earlier and wetter, autumns and winters milder. Tornadoes may be more frequent, as Tornado Alley moves east from Oklahoma. Other changes might be expected, however, and they will be due not only to weather events but also to cumulative habitat destruction and pollution. Studies suggest that is likely th...
Poor Will's Almanack: November 5 - 11, 2019
November 05, 2019 11:44 - 3 minutes - 199 BytesAn Almanack horoscope suggests that the many seasons in the landscape of this time of year offer contrast and cheer to the darkening days. Early November marks the center of the Season of Second Spring: sweet Cicely, Virginia creeper, burdock, red clover, waterleaf, ground ivy, celandine, sweet rocket, dock and leafcup often revive and look ahead six months to Middle Spring. Deer Mating Season coincides with Witch Hazel Blooming Season, and the Season of Red Berries throughout the parks as do...
Poor Will's Almanack: October 29 - November 4, 2019
October 29, 2019 10:44 - 3 minutes - 199 BytesThroughout Middle and Late Fall, frogs and toads seek shelter from the coming cold, migrating to protective places underground, in water or in cracks and crevices that will keep them from the forces of Early, Deep and Late Winter Under the Sleeping Frog Moon, Christmas cacti bud in sunny windows. People plant paperwhite and amaryllis bulbs for the holiday season ahead. As toads and frogs migrate, chickweed grows back all along the woodland paths, and cress revives in pools and streams. Cattai...
Poor Will's Almanack: October 22 - 28, 2019
October 22, 2019 10:44 - 3 minutes - 199 BytesThe Sun’s passage from Libra to Scorpio on Cross-Quarter Day October 23 opens the hinge of Middle Autumn and initiates the most dramatic period of leaf fall. Throughout this final stage of the natural year, the landscape becomes fully primed for the new signs and seasons to come. As the days shorten, the effects of the weakening sun are easily seen in the collapse of almost all the foliage. Smaller changes also offer measure of Scorpio. The low trills of the field crickets become slow, then r...
Poor Will's Almanack: October 15 - 21, 2019
October 15, 2019 10:44 - 3 minutes - 199 BytesThe canopy of leaves appeared solid throughout the hot summer, its entire nature dense and uniform, its shade thick and deep. Within a few days, that canopy will shatter deep into the jug of autumn. That jug, that earthen container takes it all. Everything from the whole year past goes into the jug of October. Events and objects get mixed up in the tumble. The smooth wall of June is torn apart. The heat of July and August is filtered and cooled. All of the long green horizon crumbles. The bes...