Greetings!
If you have ever tried to garden, you know that one of the greatest struggles can be weeds. We’ve known ways to mitigate the weeds; such as mulch and plastic walk way covers. In order to cover the space of the food forest it was a huge expense to purchase these materials. We’ve called around to local wood cutters and mills. Signed up for chip drop about 50 times. We received a couple yard through those means. Just a mere fraction of what we need.
We started to lean towards purchasing plastic for the walk ways. I just hated this idea, yet know its an effective weed blocking method. I decided to make a wood chips wanted sign as one last try at getting free/cheap mulch. Within a week trucks full of wood chips began to arrive! We now have hundreds of yards! Plans of mulching volunteer parties during the first part of November.
Feel free to stop by and enjoy the changing of the leaves. I’ve added a sign by the road to welcome you in!
EVENTS THIS WEEK
-Tea Time Friday at 10:30. Subject: Spores
-Harvesting the yams on Saturday, the 14th in the afternoon. The Annular Solar Eclipse starts after 12:00. If skies are clear, we can do some star gazing and pot luck dinner after. Let me know if this interests you.
ASTRONOMY
Monday- The moon is going to be farthest from the Earth, 251,900 miles away. This is called apogee, it happens at 11:42 pm. After 8:00 pm, Jupiter rises and will be bright and visible all night. It is coming close to opposition. This makes it ideal to view its moons through a telescope. On the west side of the planet sits IO. To the East is Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto will be significantly far east. Watch the moons move in their orbits through the night. See the great red spot, most visible after midnight.
Tuesday- Rise early, an hour or two before sunrise. Venus, the waning crescent moon, and the bright star Rugulus will be present high in the East. In the evening, Pluto is with the stars of Sagittarius.
Wednesday- In the pre dawn hours Comet Hartley 2 can be seen with a telescope passing through Gemini by the Lion Nebula. The constellation begins to rise after Midnight. It is coming to its closest point to the sun, this is called perihelion. This closeness will make the comet slightly more illuminated each night.
Thursday- Twoish hours before the sun rises, the crescent moon can be seen in the Eastern sky. It may look brighter, as the suns light is bouncing off Earth and shining on the moon. There is an opportunity to see the zodiacal light this morning. This glow will exist along the Eastern horizon. This occurs when small particles in the inner solar system are illuminated by the sun. Particles come from comets and dust storms from other planets, like Mars.
Friday- A couple hours after sunset, take your focus to the Southern sky. Saturn is there with its moon Titan visible through a scope. In the southwest part of Aquarius, there is what’s called the Ghost of Saturn, Saturn Nebula, or NGC 7009. It’s called a ghost because it looks very similar to a hazy Saturn. The nebula has an elongated shape making it look like rings.
Saturday- New Moon, making it a great night for a very dark sky. There is a an annular Solar Eclipse. The moon so far away that it’s unable to completely block out the sun. We can see a partial eclipse begin to occur around 12:15 and peak around 1:20.
SPACE FLIGHT NEWS
-A Russian laboratory module on the International space station has sprung a leak. Not a lot of info has been shared on this subject.
-SpaceX plans to launch several rockets this week. A Falcon 9 launch will cary a batch of Starlink sats from Cape Canaveral pad 40. A Falcon Heavy is planned to launch on October 12 carrying a NASA space craft to the metallic Psyche Astroid. The spacecraft will reach it’s orbit in 2029. Learn more about this mission here.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/psyche/