The Supreme Court and English Quarter Days

Today, the US Supreme Court starts its new term, meeting (remotely this year) on the first Monday in October. Although not explicitly stated on its official website, I can't help but think the tradition has its roots in the English quarter day customs.

From the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, the first day of each quarter of the year on the English calendar was the time for magistrates to hold court, debts to be settled, rents paid, and other financial and legal matters resolved and noted in the record books. The idea was to set a limit on how long such things were allowed to go unresolved.

The days roughly corresponded to the seasonal events of solstices and equinoxes, with the year beginning on Lady Day (March 25), followed by Midsummer (June 24), Michaelmas (Sept. 29) and Christmas (Dec. 25).

In 1752, England and its dominions (including the American colonies) adopted the Gregorian calendar reforms, along with the Scottish practice of starting the year on January 1. The traditional quarter days continued to be observed, however, and even today, the fall term at English colleges is called Michaelmas term. 

Today, the English financial year is divided into standardized quarters that are the same as the US system: Jan. 1, April 1, July 1, and Oct. 1.

Michaelmas (pronounced mick-ul-muss) is still the name for the first of the four quarters of the legal year in England, when certain courts begin sitting in October, after an elaborate ceremony at Westminster Abbey. The US Supreme Court session used to begin with a ceremonial visit to the White House, but now they get right to business hearing oral arguments on the first day.

The Supreme Court didn't always begin meeting on the first Monday in October, however. When it was founded in 1790, it was scheduled to meet on the first Monday in February and again in August. It was changed to October in 1917, according to the National Constitution Center.

By the way, this cheerful fall-bloomer, the aster, is known as the Michaelmas daisy in England.

Winds-day on Friday

I've been noticing that everyone's being kind of wistful these days. Such beautiful weather in October inspires a very different response from northerners than the same weather when it makes its first appearance in May. Then, we felt great relief and excitement; now, we feel wistful. It's no less a pleasure, I think, it just has a different context.

My new Prairiefire flowering crabapple was looking so pretty yesterday, with its leaves turning an unusually lovely shade of red for that species; and already today the wind has blown nearly all of them away.













Some landed in the birdbath.

The black-eyed susans have dropped their cheery golden petals, but still look handsome with their healthy foliage, round black seedheads, and colorful stems.

The fall raspberries offer just enough fruit for my yogurt in the morning. The canes are dreadfully overgrown, I need to cut them down and purge the unproductive ones—for some reason, there's a large section that just won't bear fruit, both on our side of the fence and our neighbors. Our neighbors Bonnie and Joe removed the ones on their side, and I need to do my part so that mine don't re-colonize their much tidier raspberry patch. For raspberry work, it needs to be cool enough to wear long sleeves, so I keep saving that one for later. I think "later" has come to now.

Besides the raspberries, there's still much to do in the garden. We need to tidy up the garden beds we've started but won't be planting til spring, cutting ditched edges with our spades and covering the exposed soil with woodchips, which we fetch by the carload from a spot where the city's forestry department dumps it for residents' use.

The kitchen garden has been fenced and boxed, but it needs the center leveled and covered with class 5 gravel, for a firm base under either a thin layer of pea gravel or pavers of some sort. The center, being too small for another raised bed but much larger than needed as a pathway alone, will be more like a small garden plaza, as I imagine it. I plan to have spaces held open to plant perennial herbs by placing plastic flower pots with the bottoms cut off here and there before spreading the gravel. I have a lovely image in my head for this; it remains to be seen whether I can pull it off.

The kitchen garden fence, adorned with an oil filter we dug up in the spot. Doesn't it (the oil filter) have an attractive rusted patina, though?

And the many perennials that have been trying to get by amongst the raspberry canes need to be transplanted to the not-quite ready beds along the south side of the house.

I do hope the forecasts of a long, mild autumn prove true!