The Dog Days of Summer

What do you know about them>?

All I know is that in spanish it is called "canicula" and that gardening folklore says not to plant or try to root anything or start seeds during that time.

When I have tried to research the topic, I sure havent found very much!

Any help will be most appreciated.

Love, Lavanda (anxiously awaiting the end of that derned canicula)!

Try looking in some different almanacs, Lavanda. I think that's one place I saw it discussed recently. There is much disagreement about how it came to be called such. As usual, each belief has its followers, but it all adds up to folklore, and I love good folklore.

Hi Aimee dahlin, great to see you!

I love folklore and old wives tales and old traditions, etc myself.

Didja miss me? I've been up to my you know what trying to clean a friend's house after a near-fire. Lots of smoke, it looked like a haunted house when I first saw it. I now have my second brand new skin on my hands in three weeks. Never ever let anyone tell you it's just like housework. Not evenly slightly similar. I learned things I never wanted to know about smoke, soot, grease, all kinds of stuff. I might have finished tonight, will wait to see how some surfaces turn out.

So, you missed me!

Lavanda, it comes from the ancient Romans who associated it with the Dog Star Sirius. More info here:

http://www.wilstar.net/dogdays.htm

Oh, I thought it came from an Al Pacino movie.

Much older than that!

Maybe it was a Charlie Chaplin film...they are pretty old!

LOL

I remember when I was a child (yes, in the dark ages) during the dog days we were vary wary of getting bit by dogs and I guess everyone thought rabies was a bigger threat during that time. Old wives tale?

long before the romans...

Dog star is Sirius. Sirius is in the constellation Orion (I think), which makes its presence in Sept (depending on your latitude).

The ancients beleive Sirius was a second sun and thus made it much hotter, etc

This message was edited Saturday, Jul 26th 12:12 PM

This message was edited Friday, Aug 8th 9:49 PM

I have heard that about rabies, and now I wonder if there is any basis in fact for the belief that rabies was more prevalent in the summer. It very well could be more than an old wives' tale. And we have some vets here, don't we? Stats, anyone?

Ancient ways still work to predict nature

Modern conveniences keep us out of rhythm with earth

Homero Contreras grew up around old farmhands who had the reading of nature's signs down to a science. Take, for
example, the canicula, the 40 dog days of summer, said to be a time of year that could make or break a crop.

This year, 1999, the canicula officially ended Aug. 11, although you wouldn't know it by the heat index.

As a young boy, Contreras heard dire warnings about the canicula and rumors of what it did to those who didn't take precautions. "The people would say that that was the time of year when something was in the air," says the 62-year-old foreman of South Texas Auction in Alice. "It was the time you had to most protect yourself and your animals from the sun. If you didn't get heat stroke, they said if you drank cold water you could get a sore throat you'd have difficulty getting over."

Canicula occurs from early July into mid-August, the precise days varying annually. The Romans referred to it as "dies canincula," blaming the sun and the dog star Sirius, which rises and sets with the sun during the dog days, for unleashing the fires of hell on Earth.

Predicting rain

"My dad used to say that if there was rain at the start of the canicula, there would be rain during the rest of the canicula." says Leonardo Carrillo, professor of Mexican American studies and director of international studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "If it didn't begin with rain, that's how it'd be for the remainder of those
40 days."

By tracking how the dog days started, farmers could predict if rain was coming in the weeks ahead and thus determine whether to bring in a crop early. Ranchers, in contrast, prayed for rainy caniculas.

Today, man relies on modern technology to predict Mother
Nature's fickle ways, "but looking to the heavens and nature for signs is still one of the best predicting methods," Carrillo argues.

If cattle, for instance, lie down during the day, the rancher should expect rain, Carillo says. The same is true of ants when they begin to build their mounds or start swarming indoors.

Connection to moon

Folk beliefs also are linked to the moon. Farmers at one time believed it best to plant after the third full moon of the year to avoid a freeze. Like canicula, the signs of nature determined when to till and when to harvest.

"My father used to be able to look at a moon and say, 'Esta luna viene con agua. (This moon is coming with rain.)'," recalls Carrillo.

"We've lost that ability to understand our surroundings.
Now we create days of our nights and nights of our days.
We can have light 24 hours a day with a flip of a switch," Carrillo notes. "And so we don't appreciate the night. We have air conditioning 24 hours a day, recreating during the day the coolness of night. And so we don't appreciate the warmth and heat of the day.

"Thus, the 24-hour business day is born. We can go grocery
shopping at three in the morning and have people working from 11 at night to 7 in the morning."

Old customs, practices and folk beliefs like the canicula may be a thing of the past, but they remind us of times when we stopped working at sundown and started at sunrise, "when we were in rhythm with nature," says Carrillo. "We were able to read her signs, understand them and live with them."


© 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times

http://corpuschristionline.com/1999/august/22/today/sylvia_l/4807.html

My mother just said tonight that if it rains or is dry at the beginning of dog days it will do the same for the rest of them. So far, the last 3 years is right on.

The Dog Days of Summer

Everyone knows that the “dog days of summer” occur during the hottest and muggiest part of the season. Webster defines “dog days” as...

1 : the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere

2 : a period of stagnation or inactivity

But where does the term come from? Why do we call the hot, sultry days of summer “dog days?”

In ancient times, when the night sky was unobscured by artificial lights and smog, different groups of peoples in different parts of the world drew images in the sky by “connecting the dots” of stars. The images drawn were dependent upon the culture: The Chinese saw different images
than the Native Americans, who saw different pictures than the Europeans.

These star pictures are now called constellations, and the constellations that are now mapped out in the sky come from
our European ancestors.

They saw images of bears, (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor), twins, (Gemini), a bull, (Taurus), and others, including dogs, (Canis Major and Canis Minor).

The brightest of the stars in Canis Major (the big dog) is Sirius, which also happens to be the brightest star in the night sky. In fact, it is so bright that the ancient Romans thought that the earth received heat from it. Look for it in the southern sky (viewed from northern latitudes) during
anuary.

In the summer, however, Sirius, the “dog star,” rises and sets with the sun. During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and the ancients believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. They named this period of time, from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days after, “dog days” after the dog star.

The conjunction of Sirius with the sun varies somewhat with latitude. And the “precession of the equinoxes” (a gradual
drifting of the constellations over time) means that the constellations today are not in exactly the same place in the sky as they were in ancient Rome. Today, dog days occur during the period between July 3 and August 11. Although it is certainly the warmest period of the summer, the heat is not due to the added radiation from a far-away star, regardless of its brightness. No, the heat of summer is a
direct result of the earth's tilt.

Copyright © 1999, 2000 by Jerry Wilson

http://wilstar.com/dogdays.htm

Thankls , Weeds. I am still looking for info about planting procedures, traditions, etc regarding dog days.

I know when I was younger, I was given information about it as in the aspect of gardening, but cant remember it for the life of me!

Hugs, Lavanda

My Mother is 90 and I asked her if she remembered why they called it the dog days. She grew up in Minnesota so most of her tales surround the water that is there. She told me that the algae would grow on the lakes really badly during the dog days and that they would try to keep the dog from swimming during that time or he would stink too badly. She also mentioned the almost exact thing that Lavanda wrote in her post above about the stars. She is going to try to remember more for me tonight and write it down if she can remember anything.

Edited.

This message was edited May 20, 2005 2:32 PM

Tks, Bitty, going there right now!

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=178 from the astrological point of view