Janina, surprised by the signs of nature, already knows what autumn will be like: a big surprise awaits her

After a few days of rain, the Dzūkas are still waiting for the autumn mushroom outbreak that will soon begin, and J. Janušauskienė, who trades in forest products in Merkine, near the Vilnius-Druskininkai road, has already placed some less developed boletus in the hood of the car. But I didn’t come to talk to her about the secrets of mushroom growth, to find out what the inevitable fall will be like. Because Janina, according to the signs of nature, observing the change of trees, the behavior of birds and beasts, predicted quite accurately or just guessed the weather this summer.

“I told you that the biggest heat of the summer will be before Grass, and after them it will end. But the heat was still a week after Žolinė, although it was raining,” admitted J. Janušauskienė.

According to Marcinkoniškės, in a few years we have gotten used to the fact that September is still almost summer, but this year the signs of nature show that it is not worth the wait. Autumn will be what it was in its childhood, with rain and fog, although there will be another sunny day.

“The birch leaves are still green, but there are a lot of dry pine and juniper trees, this predicts that the lung disease will spread. Juniper can say more about heart disease, and pine is the lungs, “said the interlocutor in popular medicine.

The conversation is interrupted by the driver of the car who has stopped to buy forest goods. Take a liter jar of late blueberries and the same number of squirrels for a total of 8 euros.

We return to the subject of weather and ask Janina when the autumn frosts will begin.

“In the second half of September. Bob’s summer will be late September and early October, but not as much as it usually is. And the rest of October will be rainy. There will be sunny days, but we really won’t run out of humidity.” said J. Janušauskienė.

The woman points out that the birds are not yet in a hurry to fly and says that autumn has lasted a long time. Not only that, a pleasant surprise awaits the mushrooms in late autumn.

“The last snowfall this spring was in May, and the late boletus will start to sprout at a time when no one expects them, at the end of October, before All Saints’ Day,” said Marcinkoniškė.

It’s too early to talk about next winter, according to Janina. First you need to see how the leaves of the trees will turn yellow and begin to fall, when the birds will fly, how the rivers will fill with water, and only then, towards the Late, will they be able to predict the future weather according to these signs.

“It just came to our attention then. If I haven’t been in the forest for a few days, I may already miss something important,” said J. Janušauskienė.

A woman born and raised on a single farm in the village of Grybaulia, a family of 11 children, said she had been grazing cows in the forest since she was 3 years old. As a child, she began to observe the signs of nature and learned to understand what they meant. Then she began to take notes when the earth descended after the frost, when the lights bloomed, when the blueberry first, when the anthill woke up. Janina’s father had God’s gift to understand the signs of nature, but she was also gifted with this ability, only she was in no rush to reveal all the secrets of nature to everyone.