Sandhill Crane time begins

The Almanack Horoscope

For the Second Week of Late Fall

Moon Time: As apple cider time comes to a close, people set paperwhite and amaryllis bulbs in shallow water for holiday blooms, and on November 18, the new moon is the Paperwhite Moon, completely dark at 6:42 a.m. It reaches apogee, its gentle position farthest from Earth, on November 21. Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, this moon passes overhead around midday.

Sun Time: In November's third week, the rate of increase in the length of the night finally begins to slow to about ten minutes in seven days instead of fifteen minutes. By November 20, however, sunrise time is close to half an hour later than it was on Halloween, and sunset time is just a few minutes from its earliest setting time of the year.

Planet Time: Saturn becomes more and more difficult to see as it rides Ophiuchus into the sunset.

Shooting Star Time: The Leonid meteors continue active between November 17 and 21 in the east after 12:00 a.m. The Leonid Meteors can be used to start a countdown for the arrival of spring. When those shooting stars fall, then only 30 major cold fronts remain in winter, 20 of which will coincide with changes in the phase of the moon.

Star Time: After dark, find Cassiopeia and Cepheus almost overhead between the Milky Way and the North Star. The Big Dipper will lie along the northern horizon. Due south, the scattered star groups of Pisces and Aquarius wander above the tree line, anchored by Fomalhaut.

The November 20 Front: The fifth major high to cross the nation in November usually begins to complicate the holiday travel season, and the chances for deep snow increase in the North. Like all the fronts of November and December, this one pushes the hard-freeze line well into the South. Apogee on the 21st, however, does increase the chances for milder conditions.

The November 24 Front: This year the November 24 front coincides with a weak moon (entering its fourth phase and close to apogee), a coincidence that suggests this second-last front of the month could be less disruptive than usual during the Thanksgiving period. Nevertheless, chances for an afternoon in the 70s are now only one in one hundred. On March 2, they rise again.

Zeitgebers: Events in Nature that Tell the Time of Year: Euonymus berries split and reveal their orange seeds, beech leaves fall, and winter wheat is often two to four inches tall in the fields. In a warm fall, spring's new henbit can be budding. But decorative pear leaves often fall near this date, creating a major change in the urban landscape.

Beech, honeysuckles, boxwood, forsythia, and the strongest of the maples, osage, pears, and sycamores keep scattered color in the landscape past Thanksgiving. When early winter arrives between December 8 and 15, however, it takes almost all the holdouts

Field and Garden Time: The power of the moon increases in the final days of its cycle. Seeds planted now often sprout earlier and grow more vigorously than seeds sown at other lunar times.

Feed the lawn — fall is a better time than in the spring — the winter’s rain and snow, freezing and thawing, will gently work the fertilizer through the soil. Mulch the wet perennial beds to prevent drying, January’s heaving, and cold damage.

This is a perfect lunar week for setting in all your indoor bulbs like amaryllis and paperwhites. If you plant them now, they should grow well as dark moon waxes.

Mind and Body Time: New moon on the 18th is likely to increase Seasonal Affective Disorder for people who are having an adverse reaction to the collapse of the leaf canopy. And rheumatism increases as the weather grows colder, often foretelling precipitation; aches and pains may flare up the most at the approach of the November 20 cold front.

Marketing Time: Muhammad's birthday is December 1 for Sunni Muslims, December 6 for Shia Muslims. Consider investigating this market area for your lambs and kids. Also repare to market your poinsettias, Christmas cacti and herbs. You might even think about selling a few Christmas trees this year.

Creature Time (for fishing, hunting, feeding, bird watching): Fish near midday when the moon is overhead. Your luck should improve as the cold front of November 20 approaches. If the fish bite, game will be moving in the woods; pets and children may be more troublesome at school, and hospital patients are likely to be more restless.

Journal

Several years ago, my wife and I went to Madison, Wisconsin, for a family get-to-gether at my sister’s. We arrived the night before Thanksgiving just as the wind picked up and rain turned to heavy flakes of snow. By morning, the sky was clear and the air was sharp. The ground and rooftops were white, all the leaves down and covered from the storm.

Before breakfast, I went walking with Bella, our border collie. The sun had come up an hour before, and it was shining through the bare trees. Crows were calling from the bike path behind my sister’s house.

Then, high above me, I heard sandhill cranes. I looked up to see them in a ragged formation maybe half a mile high, flying hard with a northwest tailwind into the sun and crying their rattling, trumpet calls. The adults and their offspring, having spent the summer in the northern wetlands, might have been heading toward Springfield on the way to wintering country in Florida and the Caribbean.

I walked a little further with Bella, and then I heard them again. This time, the cranes were in a perfect “V” and, it seemed to me, flying even higher and faster. They would certainly beat me to Ohio, I thought.

(Note: Beginning around November 20, sandhill cranes start traveling over Clark County on their way south. They continue their flights into the first week of January.)

OTHER POOR WILL’S ALMANACK COLUMNS

Daylight Saving Time comes to an end

First chance for snow flurries

Full moon could bring frost

Peak leaf color begins