By week’s end, the moon is lost amid the glare of the sun, with new moon at 3:46 Friday afternoon. While you might say that the moon has disappeared behind the sun, it has in truth disappeared in front of the sun. As our natural satellite, the moon’s orbit around earth never carries it opposite the sun. Rather, the new moon is there before our eyes, as close as ever. But as it hovers in broad daylight directly between Earth and the sun, we are blind to it.

Dear Bay Weekly:     Recently published here was an article about black walnut trees, mainly about their impact on surrounding plants [Bay Gardener: Feb 11]. I thought to balance this article by adding something about the impact of the surroundings on black walnut trees.