Ken Lassman has been keeping this almanac for over a decade, He invites you to share your observations and photos in the comments section. You can find his book Wild Douglas County at The Raven Bookstore and The Community Mercantile in Lawrence.
July: Buffalo Mating Moon
The Osages commemorate the keystone species of the prairie, the bison, for its mating season, which used to be one of the greatest spectacles found in North America. The book The Osages has descriptions of the titanic battles between competing bulls and how they would plow up large areas of prairie sod as they pushed each other aroound. Read that and you’ll understand why the Osage clled this the Bufffalo Mating Moon.
This month is a time when many songbirds molt, or lose their colorful feathers that helped attract a mate in the spring. It is a time when many gooseberries are ripe in the woods, when warm season grasses shoot up tall and wildflowers grow taller to compete for the sun. Cicadas sing during the day, with damelflies and dragonflies eating mosquitoes while dodging the watchful eye of the bullfrog. At night, katydids begin their song while lightning bugs stitch across yards, meadows and fields.
Thunderstorms seem to lose their way, appearing, moving and disappearing almost at random this time of year, causing flash flooding at one spot while leaving nearby areas dry. A wet road at night can host steamy fog and fast jumping frogs crossing the pavement, while moonlit nights can bring out many a nocturnal animal beating the heat of the day. If the moon isn’t bright, take a look at the milky way that the summer so nicely showcases, including the constellation Sagittarius in the south, which looks like a teapot outline in the sky but holds the center of our galaxy.
We skated on less than 6 inches. Lighter then. Some of the best times I can remember. Hardly felt cold until it came time to unlace the skates, then the fingers didn’t work properly.
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My folks would always have us cut a hole in the ice to make sure it was that thick before they turned us loose and I believe that there were times 6 inches were not measured with a ruler. When it snowed on the ice, we would shovel a spoked circle and play goose and fox, a kind of game of tag where the fox would tag the geese and send them to the middle space where they could be freed by other geese–unless the fox tagged them first. Great fun until you could no longer feel the toes on your feet!
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Hi Ken, I can hardly believe the healthy stand of bittersweet in your photo. Our stand (a well-guarded secret) was just a smidgeon of what it was last year. The entire vine that usually trails up into a tall tree was completely dead. We had to satisfy ourselves with a sparse gangly showing along the side of the road. Thanks for nourishing my connection to Kansas on a weekly basis with your observations for the Kaw Valley Almanac!
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Someone else said that their bittersweet was scragglier this year, too. I don’t know what to account for it being so healthy here, other than around here, almost all plants look so much better than they were doing the last couple of years. The drought might have knocked back some bittersweet and killed others outright, just as it did with some trees which survived the dry spells only to die this year. As an aside, my stands are American bittersweet; there is a chinese variety that has been introduced and is much more aggressive than the native version.
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