Doggone It!

August 2015

Pickaway to Garden

By Paul J. Hang

 Doggone It!

The Dog Days start in early July and end in Mid-August. This year the Dog Days have certainly been wet ones, so far. That smell however was not a wet dog but wet earth and vegetation, the smell of rain on asphalt and concrete. Dog Days have the well-earned reputation of being hot and miserable. Our late summers are usually droughty. Will this be the case this year? Who knows?

Dog days are named for the star Sirius which is the brightest star, visible in the night sky in winter and in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. Sirius is in conjunction with the Sun from July 3 through August 11. Sirius rises and sets with the sun this time of year. Ancients believed it added heat to the sun. Therefore, they believed, the dog days are the hottest muggiest most uncomfortable days of the year. They sacrificed a brown dog as a way to get some relief. I do not recommend this.  It would bring no relief. Dog is man’s best friend and, as we all know, every dog will have his day. This doggerel is not dogmatic but probably is inexcusable.

By the end of the first week of August we will be at mid-summer, half way between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. By mid-month summer is waning. Days are getting shorter but not yet at an alarming rate. Although this is true, this time of year also seems like true summer. Warm days, summer sales, misty mornings, meteors, tomatoes, pokeweed, milkweed, goldenrod, sumac, crabapples, watermelon, sweet corn and ragweed, all confirm that the season is at its height. Ragweed is the culprit causing hay fever allergies, not goldenrod, not dog hair and not hay. Some birds have begun their migration. Cicadas, crickets, and katydids begin their chorus not to be silenced until the frosts of fall.

The passing of this season is both sweet and sad. When I was a boy I would notice chicory blooming in the playground. It made me a little sick to my stomach, a little panicky, because I knew school would be starting soon. I wanted the summer to last longer and to squeeze whatever I could out of the rest of it. A line from a 1943 song, Speak Low, lyrics by Ogden Nash, who also wrote a lot about dogs, reflects my sentiments exactly, “Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon.”

Need gardening advice? Call the Gardening Helpline 474-7534. Other resources are ohioline.osu.edu and, to read a weekly discussion of problems facing those of us who “grow things” check out bygl.osu.edu. Buckeye Yard and Garden Line (bygl) is a real education. You learn, for instance, that problems you may be having with certain plants are also being experienced by others. Experts discuss what to do. It is updated weekly.