Stepping out into the thick August air leaves little doubt we are still deep in summer, the season’s mid-point is on the 6th. Yet, even as heat and humidity rule and hurricane season gains momentum, our tilted planet’s orbit swings us back toward solar equilibrium and summer’s languid downhill coast to Fall begins to pick up speed. Sunrise, at 6:14 on the 1st, slips to 6:40 by the 31st. Sunset slides from 8:17 all the way back to 7:40.
While desperately needed recent rains have, briefly, greened our world back up, most of that water has not gotten far past the living layer near the surface. Most estimates have us needing at least half a foot more rain to get the Piedmont (moderate to severe) and western Virginia (extreme) off the drought list. In the forest, I have been seeing little reminders of the dependence on water we share with all other life forms; mushrooms are suddenly back.
Ecologists are just beginning to understand the role that mycelia, the threadlike ‘parents’ of those mushrooms, play in the health of a forest. It is also easy to see why humans, for millennia, believed in the spontaneous generation of life from nothing. We now know that not only are those pop-up toadstools the fruiting body of those tiny white fibers but their network connects to a vast underground system we rarely see.
The fungi, neither plant nor animal, help break down all the debris cast off in a forest, using what they need but happily trading their minerals for sugars from the trees; an actual matrix, just below our feet. The water dependence evident from the timing of rains until the popping of the caps. The chunks missing from those caps, nibbled on by a host of critters, is more evidence of the intertwining of all life in the woods.
Off Earth, during the ten or so hours of darkness, there is little to dazzle in August. Summer constellations remain low in the south. The Full Sturgeon moon is on the 19th. The bright star near the moon the next night is Saturn. The other planets are best seen pre-dawn. Venus is back but really too low in the southwest to spot after sunset. A Perseid meteor sighting is possible any night in August but the annual shower peaks on the night of the 11th-12th. Our orbit moves our view of the sun (still very ‘spotty’ - use eclipse glasses to check) from Cancer into Leo on the 12th.
Meteors and mushrooms aside, August is about the summer sun and heat. Old temperature records continue to be brushed aside, every month, for well over a year, hotter than that month was in any past record keeping. Change, literally and figuratively, storming and flooding our way daily.
Still, August is summer and summer is great. A little planning and good timing, pool, lake, river or beach availability, conditioned air nearby or just deep shade and there is much joy to be discovered out on the planet this month. Just stay safe; sunscreen and bug spray are still needed but Earth beckons; get out there, new adventures and connections await. Today On Earth
Google..good search..most everything else..coded by clueless geeks
How about this girl in your pants, donnie???
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