September

Warm September brings the fruit;
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

***

September blow soft
Till the fruit's in the loft.

***

Marry in September's shine,
Your living will be rich and fine.

***

September 29th (Michaelmas) is the day of the Feast of St. Michael. Like St. Swithin's Day, St. Michael's Day was said to give a clue to the weather to come: if Michaelmas brings many acorns, Christmas will bring snow; if Michaelmas was fair, the winter would have much sunshine but sharp and nipping wind; if Michaelmas was dark, Christmas would be light.

***

"Sorrow and scarlet leaf,
Sad thoughts and sunny weather.
Ah me, This glory and this grief
Agree not well together!"
--Thomas Parsons, A Song For September.

***

"By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather
And autumn's best of cheer."
--Helen Hunt Jackson, September.

***

"Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers."
--Carl Sandburg, Under the Harvest Moon.

***

"The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel.
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze."
--John Updike, September.

August

"He had named him [August] for that month when the year stands still and blue day follows blue day, when for a while he stopped looking at the sky." --from Little, Big, by John Crowley.

August 1ST (or Lammas Day, one of the regular quarter-days in Scotland, and a half-quarter day in England, was the day of offering the first-fruits of the harvest in Anglo-Saxon times; the term comes from Old English hlafmaesse, the loaf-mass) is already past, and much of the traditional lore for August concerns reaping and gathering:

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

Dry August and warm
Doth harvest no harm.

None in August should over land,
In December none over the sea.

Whoever wed in August be,
Many a change is sure to see.

The boughs do shake and the bells do ring,
So merrily comes our harvest in,
Our harvest in, our harvest in,
So Merrily comes our harvest in.
We've ploughed, we've sowed,
We've reaped, we've mowed,
We've got our harvest in.

July

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.
***
In July,
Some reap rye;
In August,
If one will not the other must.
***
Those who in July are wed,
Must labor for their daily bread.
***
Knee high
By the Fourth of July.
(Rule applied to corn to see if it's a good crop.)
***
St. Swithin's* day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithin's day, if thou be fair,
For forty days 'twill rain na mair.
***
If you plant turnips on the twenty-fifth of July,
You will have turnips, wet or dry.


*July 15.