I Was Thinking... Nature’s Warnings

I mowed the lawn recently and it looked better than it has during a lot of the summer. But with the green grass, I also collected a lot of leaves. This time however, I didn’t wear a T-shirt and shorts, it was jeans and a sweatshirt.
Nature was prompting me to get ready. Daylight getting less, temperatures dropping, and leaves starting their transformation all were signs that fall is here, and winter isn’t far off. There are a lot of signs that warn you it is time to start cleaning up and putting things away, you just have to know where to look.
My grandfather was a farmer and knew how to read nature. He didn’t have weathermen that made 30-day forecasts and there weren’t any satellite images to predict weather patterns. He read the Farmer’s Almanac and depended on the signs his father had passed on to him. So, in the fall he would tell me what to watch for to see if we were going to have a hard winter.
He said to watch the squirrels and how active they were in gathering nuts. The thicker the corn husks the colder the winter.
Check the hair on the nape of the cow’s neck. Raccoons with thick tails and bright bands mean colder.
Knowing how high the hornet’s nest are, will tell you how deep the snow will get. Check out the orange band on the woolly caterpillar. The wider the band the colder the winter. If the snow owls arrive early, it will be bad. Are the ducks and geese departing early?
He asked if I’d ever seen the V shape of the geese flying south? Of course, any country boy knew about that. Then he asked if I knew why one side of the V was always longer than the other side. I was eager to learn some more farm folk lore about the aerodynamics of flight he was willing to impart to his grandson. When I asked why, he said, “Well that’s easy, there are more geese in that line.”
While I learned, I couldn’t always trust grandpa, a lot of what he said did seem as accurate as what many “meteorologists” can predict with their sophisticated equipment.
So, I know winter can’t be far away because the south side of my house has become a haven for thousands of box elder bugs, a squirrel is burying walnuts all over my back yard, and my once healthy-looking planters have a drab, weathered, limp appearance. All these indicators are reason enough to start that unenviable task of putting things away for the winter.
It is always more enjoyable to pull things out of the shed in the spring to start the growing process than to see plants wither and die and put empty pots away in the fall. But it is best to heed the warning signs because in some years Mother Nature doesn’t wait and just dumps a layer of white before we are ready.
Our dress codes should also reinforce the need to prepare. Many wore shorts to the first football games of the year but now fans come with sweatshirts, coats, hats, and blankets. Families start digging in closets for those flannel shirts, hooded sweatshirts, and warm socks. Rakes and leaf blowers start to appear in garages, and the air conditioner may even get covered.
And if you still aren’t convinced that fall is really here, just drive by St. John’s Lutheran Church today and take a good whiff of the smell of lutefisk emanating from the fellowship hall.
 
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