A complete guide to the Perseid meteor shower, midsummer gardening, making a home for chickens, and more!
| | | Thank you, Mariah Goodwin in Illinois, for this week’s photo! | In 1986, everybody was talking about Halley’s Comet. It’s easy to understand why: Visible to the naked eye once every 75 years, Halley’s was a once-in-a-lifetime, must-see event. At the time, there were viewing parties, vacations planned along its path, and headlines in major newspapers like The New York Times that read “A Party in the Sky.”
The excitement for Halley’s Comet has always arisen because of a sense of wonder at nature and her powerful beauty, a curiosity that is still alive and well today. Even though we have more information than ever available at our fingertips, this doesn’t change our human desire for actual connection and engagement with a world bigger than the one in which we live every day. The great news is that there are always opportunities to look up at the sky and be amazed.
Halley’s Comet won’t be back until 2061, but there’s still plenty happening in the night sky: During August 11–13, look for the Perseid meteor shower, which will be most visible before midnight each evening.
Speaking of comets . .. Bob Berman, our astronomy editor, has written about the icy parent of the Perseid meteor, Comet Swift-Tuttle, described as "the single most dangerous object known to humanity".
Checking in on our gardeners, especially the less seasoned: How are you doing? Gardening can be not only rewarding and relaxing but also frustrating and stressful—yet most of us wouldn’t trade our time digging in the dirt for anything else in the world. While some might argue that bad experiences make great gardeners, a little help goes a long way! With this in mind, here are a few tips to keep your garden growing throughout the end of summer.
Keeping your garden organic? Try this advice to cope with bugs without chemicals and to make your own homemade herbicides.
If houseplants are more your style, we have a new webinar coming up in which you’re sure to be interested: Houseplants 101—Solving Common Houseplant Problems.
Finally, if you started a garden to grow your own edibles, the next step on your self-sufficiency journey might very well be raising chickens! It all starts with a place to keep them, but there’s no need to spend a lot of money: Follow this guide on designing and building your very own chicken coop!
As sure as the Sun will rise and set each day, The Old Farmer’s Almanac is here for you, now and always.
Your Friends from The Old Farmer’s Almanac |
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| “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something that you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.” –Stephen Hawking (1942–2018), theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author, most notably for A Brief History of Time |
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