{"id":10204,"date":"2012-06-30T22:42:11","date_gmt":"2012-07-01T03:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=10204"},"modified":"2012-06-30T22:42:11","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T03:42:11","slug":"the-dog-days-of-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/06\/the-dog-days-of-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dog Days of Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Our South West Florida Summers are renown for their heat and humidity.\u00a0 Growing up, during Summer our gardening efforts ceased except for a few tomatoes and heat loving okra (I love okra pickles.)\u00a0 Today I liken going outside on a hot summer day to \u201copening the oven door.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 But I also know that even before Summer truly arrives, the sky tells me what is on the way by showing me the constellations and their bright stars overhead and there is a point in the dead of Summer that I can go outside, early before sunrise, and greet the assurance of the coming Winter constellations and attendant bright stars such as Sirius.<\/p>\n

Just the other day I was out with my mom and we got to talking about the heat, and what was growing vis not growing and she mentioned \u201cIt\u2019s the Dog Days you know\u201d and sure enough, it is.\u00a0 You may wonder, what a strange term, \u201cDog Days\u2026\u201d\u00a0 and what does it have to do with the night sky, with Summer, and growing things\u2026\u00a0 Older readers may be more familiar with the term.<\/p>\n

Dog Days are more than an ancient expression it is actually a section of time as we move through the year on this great, blue ball of water\u2026\u00a0 Dog Days occur during the month\u2019s of July and August- our hottest months.\u00a0 The Greeks used the expression as well as the Romans and Egyptians to denote a time of the year when the sultry heat was most intense and\u00a0 according to Brady\u2019s Clavis Calendarium c1813\u00a0 “the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Astronomically \/ Astrologically, The Dog Days were marked by the yearly Heliacal rising of Sirius above the Eastern horizon, just before sunrise, after a period of time when Sirius had been behind the sun (from our viewpoint) and invisible.\u00a0\u00a0 Ancient cultures used the Heliacal rising of bright stars to help set holidays and events.\u00a0 For Ancient Egyptians, Sirius appeared on the horizon just before the time of the yearly Nile inundation.\u00a0 To the Egyptians, the star was\u00a0 Sothis.\u00a0 Sothis was used as a “watchdog” for that very event. Since its rising also coincided with a time of extreme heat, the connection with hot weather was ingrained into our ancient lore:\u00a0\u00a0 “Dog Days bright and clear \/ indicate a happy year. \/ But when accompanied by rain, \/ for better times our hopes are vain.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Tracing the line out to Sirius, ringed in red on the map.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sirius is the brightest star in the constellation of Canis Major and the brightest star in the sky.\u00a0 Canis, here in SW Florida is a Winter Constellation, easily located by taking the line of belt stars of Orion, and tracing the line out to Sirius, ringed in red on the map. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The very name Sirius comes from the Greek word for \u201csearing\u201d or \u201cscorching\u201d\u00a0 although it\u2019s also known as \u201cThe Sparkling One\u201d\u00a0 \u201cNile Star\u201d or today; \u201cThe Dog Star\u201d\u00a0 There is a universality in lore regarding Sirius.\u00a0 The Pawnee tribe of North America, and others, referred to Sirius as the ‘Wolf Star’ which indicates this Mythology of Sirius may have extremely ancient roots.\u00a0 Many cultures used the risings of bright stars such as Sirius as markers of time, to tell them when to harvest but today we remember the associated \u201cDog Days\u201d simply as the hottest, and occasionally most uncomfortable part of the year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

See July Star chart click here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our South West Florida Summers are renown for their heat and humidity.\u00a0 Growing up, during Summer our gardening efforts ceased except for a few tomatoes and heat loving okra (I… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}