New moon: In Taurus, May 13
Full moon: In Sagittarius, May 27
Visible planets: Canes Venatici is visible in the Northern Hemisphere. It was named after the hunting-dog constellations, Asterion and Chara, accompanying the mythological Boötes as he hunts for the bears, represented by the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Coma Berenices is visible in the Northern Hemisphere between Virgo and Ursa Major. It is named for Berenice, the wife of Ptolemy III of Egypt.
Astrological sign: Taurus, April 20 to May 20; Gemini, May 21 to June 20
Gem stone: Emerald
Flower: Lily of the valley
Harvard history snippet:
“In the years after 1940, Harvard grappled for the first time with a new approach to town government: town planning. The need for thoughtful planning was precipitated by a set of circumstances that had occurred only once before, at the very beginning of the town’s existence, when access to Harvard’s land was first established and the town’s population dramatically increased. Since World War II, the population of the town has again increased rapidly; and in 1940 townspeople had no experience in planning sound policies to deal with a larger, more diverse population. Innovation was in order.”
—from Directions of a Town, by Robert C. Anderson (1976)
Household tips:
- If you plan to hang clothes to dry instead of using an electric dryer, add 1/4 cup of white vinegar to the wash cycle in place of fabric softener. When dried, clothes won’t be stiff.
- It is said that a heavy line of chalk made about a finger’s distance from places frequented by ants will keep them away.
Going green:
- When shopping, look for products marked with “Post-Consumer Content” and “Recycled Content”
- To stop receiving catalogues in the mail, register with www.catalogchoice.org.
- Don’t let your car idle. Every minute you spend idling the car wastes gas; in fact idling for more than 10 seconds wastes more gas than is needed for startup.
What to do in the garden:
- Ready, set, plant! Start setting out seedlings and sowing seeds of long-season crops. (Conventional wisdom says to wait until all danger of frost has passed.)
- Make repeated sowings of lettuce, spinach, carrots, and beets for late-season harvest
- Mulch around plantings with organic material (straw, rotted leaves, etc.) to keep weeds down.
Thought for the month:
“What potent blood hath modest May.”
—Ralph W. Emerson, American poet and essayist, (1803–1882)
Do you have an almanac tidbit you’d like to share? E-mail to editor@harvardpress.com.