The Daily: 20 August 2024

It has cooled down substantially. There have been morning fogs and evening breezes. It's still very humid and the smoke is still hazing the hills, making mountains insubstantial, mere ideas of solidity squatting across the river valley. It is also raining most days, but lightly, not torrents (except for the storm cell that dropped more… Continue reading The Daily: 20 August 2024

The Daily: 5 August 2024

The Hay Moon went dark at 7:13am yesterday, over 36 hours before moonset today. So the 10th new moon of my year, the Blueberry Moon, should be visible as a thin crescent following the sun down to the western horizon this evening. This month is the second of the harvest moons and the first that… Continue reading The Daily: 5 August 2024

The Daily: 25 July 2024

The Romans had concerns about drought at this time of year. Three very old festivals were grouped together at the end of July to honor deities who presided over watery things. The first was the Lucaria, the clearing of the groves. This was an ancient observance even in Varro's time (116-27 BCE), and little is… Continue reading The Daily: 25 July 2024

The Daily: 24 June 24

Today is St John's Day and Midsummer's Day. Traditionally, this is the best day to harvest herbs. Most of the very large mint family — sage, thyme, lavender, balm, catnip, motherwort, and rosemary, among others, in addition to all the plants named "mint" — are in flower now. Some are approaching the end of their… Continue reading The Daily: 24 June 24

The Daily: 10 June 2024

The earliest sunrises, 5:05am, begin on this Thursday in my part of the world and continue until June 17th, with the sun rising one minute later at 5:06am on the 18th. If you don't count seconds, then the longest day length of 15 hours and 30 minutes begins on the Sunday the 16th, Father's Day… Continue reading The Daily: 10 June 2024

The Daily: 24 May 24

It's been the sort of month that pushes even climate deniers out of their comfy head-in-the-sand world. Every day there are pictures of homes and lives destroyed by extreme storms, from one end of the country to the other. In May, folks... The Northern Hemisphere is not yet heated to its summer temperatures and we're… Continue reading The Daily: 24 May 24