April 11th
The 101st Day of the Year
These days, the world
Is most beautiful of all:
Every seed is sprouting,
Buds are swelling.
Joannes Secundus
(bf)
Sunrise/set: 7:04/8:09
Day’s Length: 13 hours 5 minutes
Average High/Low: 60/39
Average Temperature: 49
Record High: 88 – 1930
Record Low: 24 – 1892
The Daily Weather
On average, this is the sunniest and driest day since the 21st of March, the sky being clear to partly cloudy 85 percent of the years, rain occurring only 25 percent of the years. Highs reach into the 80s five percent of the time, into the 70s fifteen percent, into the 60s thirty-five percent, into the 50s twenty percent, and the 40s twenty-five percent. After today, an afternoon high in the 30s becomes a rarity. Frost, however, still occurs an average of one night in three on this date.
Natural Calendar
In the herb garden, wood mint is about eight inches tall, and sweet for tea. Chives are ready for salads. Pastures fill with golden winter cress, purple deadnettle and dandelions. Blossoms could be out on a few strawberry plants, and hearts are forming on the bleeding heart. Pussy willow catkins have fallen. Asparagus is coming up in the sun. The earliest grasshoppers and tadpoles swarm from their eggs. The first ducklings and goslings are born. Tent caterpillars appear in the wild cherry trees. Along Nebraska’s Platte River, sandhill cranes depart for breeding grounds in the North. In the lower Midwest, aphids become active, and ladybugs come looking for them.
Daybook
1983: Box elders leafing.
1984: First grape hyacinth bloomed behind the garden wall today. Full pollen on the pussy willows.
1985: Some of the maples are turning green. First strawberry bloomed today, first asparagus came up, first buttercups bloomed. Sweet rockets bushy like pineapples. At the Covered Bridge: toothwort, violets, purple cress, bluebells, bloodroot, Dutchman’s- britches, toad trillium. May apples are three to six inches, one or two even a foot tall. First bumblebees at Middle Prairie. Twinleaf season over for the year. Some skunk cabbage fully leafed out like in June.
1986: 5:12 a.m., first loud birdsong. This morning, bees work the cherry blossoms in 45 degree temperatures, sun. Hops up six to twelve inches. Some red nubs on the grape fines, bleeding hearts early full bloom, pecan buds barely opening.
1987: Burr Oak State Park, southeastern Ohio: Spring beauties, coltsfoot, hepatica, harbinger of spring, toothwort. Buds on Jacob’s ladder and large-flowered trillium. First grass heading.
1991: Hawthorns leaf out on Dayton Street. First cherry blossoms. End of scilla, glory of the snow and most wind flowers. Grape hyacinth, large hyacinth hold on. Violets have replaced all the Early Spring bulbs in the round garden.
1992: Full perennial sprouting time now. Bleeding hearts up to four inches. Small red leaves of the purple coneflowers are up, daisies three inches, lilies big and fat, three to four inches, blue flags coming back at six inches, first violets blooming, comfrey four to six inches, ahead of the horseradish. Ranunculus taking over. First tulip blooming. Pears full bloom downtown, squills holding, star of Holland old, some older hyacinths, knotweed up three to six inches, some mint emerging, phlox strong at three inches, clusters of lupine lush, cherry buds swelling, waterleaf spreading and turning the woods floor green.
1993: Grape hyacinth noticed booming by the garden wall yesterday. Pussy willows full pollen.
1998: Frog calls 5:00 a.m. Wild phlox full bloom, and creeping phlox in town. First apple blossom opens. Lilacs are open.
1999: A frog croaked at 6:34 a.m. Zelda, the huge orange koi, leapt into the air at 4:30 p.m., rare spring frisking.
2000: Cool weather keeps most of the apple trees from opening, although there are a few dark pink ones partially blooming. The pears are leafing, and some petal fall is occurring. Along Dayton Street, the serviceberries have lost most of their flowers now. In front of the house, the brown fritillaria has come into bloom. Money plant is budding, will probably open in the warm temperatures forecast for this weekend. In the backyard, the wild crocus leaves are turning brown. Still no hearts on the bleeding heart, but the lungwort is full of blue flowers. At 5:00 a.m. robins twittering in the distance.
2001: First cabbage butterfly seen. Strawberries start to bloom. Grass should be mowed.
2002: Now the roadside grass is really green, the transformation radical in the past two weeks. One azalea opened at school in Columbus.
2003: The sun is rising now from the north end of Lil’s house at about 7:25. The peach tree is opening in the north garden.
2006: Peach tree opened completely today in the north garden.
2008: Jeanie said that worms were all over the bike path this morning, caught in last night’s heavy rain. The peach tree’s buds are pink, but won’t open until after the cold forecast for the 12th through the 14th. Our daffodils are in full bloom, the peonies are a foot tall and unraveling, and the pussy willow catkins have begun to fall. The first cabbage butterfly of the year appeared in the north garden this morning.
2009: Walk at Clifton Gorge with Jeanie: Sun, wind, high in the 50s. We walked through early Middle Spring among full bluebells and Dutchman’s britches, new miterwort, tall purple cress, hepaticas, spring beauties, early yellow bellworts, shy red ginger and large patches of large-flowered trilliums. A few toothworts were open. Some touch-me-not sprouts had a second pair of leaves. May apple umbrella foliage has just recently pushed up, leaves fresh and shiny, maybe six to nine inches tall.
2010: To Clifton Gorge with Jeanie: Sun, high 60s: The first tier of wildflowers was gone: only one hepatica, one bloodroot, fading purple cress, fading toothworts, a few tattered Dutchman’s britches. The second tier was in full bloom: miterwort, large-flowered trilliums, late toad trilliums, bluebells, bellworts, meadow rue, Solomon’s plume (budded), May apples well developed and budded, skunk cabbage leaves almost a foot long, ragwort budded, a few wild phlox open. Redbuds in full bloom throughout John Bryan Park, and in town, crab apples are coming in. At home, red and yellow tulips full, new deadnettle maybe half in bloom, a few hosta well leafed, red phlox foliage a foot tall, flags a foot. Trumpet vine has new leaves, buds on peonies (fully leafed). Tonight the toad called from the pond – after several cool nights of silence.
Judy writes from Goshen, 200 miles northwest of Yellow Springs: “Here’s the list of wildflowers we saw Sunday (the 11th): coltsfoot, rue anemone, false rue anemone, bulbous buttercup, Spring Beauty, squirrel corn (the relative of Dutchman’s Breeches), toad trillium, yellow trillium, white trillium, goldthred, May apples were budding. Today (April 15th) some crabapple blossoms are out; magnolias are starting to fall here and there; star magnolias and forsythia will be gone if we get rain with a wind tonight. I can’t believe that some apple trees are starting to bloom–they’re at least three weeks early, from what I recall of other years.”
2011: A cardinal woke me up with loud, constant calls from 5:30 until 7:00 this morning. Last night, all the pears, the serviceberries, the pink magnolias, the red quinces, and the pink cherries came into bloom.
2012: Petal fall beginning on the pink quince.
2013: I went outside at 4:55 this morning, heard faint, rhythmic frog calls. The robins were just starting to talk, and by 5:00, they were chattering throughout the neighborhood. At 5:01 there was one very laud cardinal call, then no more cardinals for a while. At 5:05, the song sparrow came in, and the crescendo of robins and song sparrows filled the dark and then the twilight until cardinals came in steadily at 5:35 and doves at 5:45, then the house sparrows by 6:00. The green frog was sitting by the pond at 9:30 – the first time I’ve seen him this year. No grackles or starlings around this morning. In the west garden, the pachysandra opened overnight. The pussy willow now is bright with pollen along the sidewalk, and the first tulip, a red one, has come out. In the south garden, some peonies are a foot high, unraveling. Close to the house in the east garden, the very first hosta spear is protruding about an inch. At Ellis Pond, small field peppergrass all about, has been blooming for quite a while, seed pods numerous. Willow hornbeam catkins. Red maples flowering, ashes, oaks, sugar maples still holding back. The star magnolia on High Street is in full bloom, a pink magnolia and a plum tree also open down Stafford Street. Rob reports his wife saw a mourning cloak butterfly and a blue, and he saw a polygonia this week.
2014: To Gethsemani near Louisville, Kentucky: I left Dayton still a little before forsythia bloom, finding quickly the undergrowth filling green near Cincinnati, and rows of daffodils up to and then across the river down into the knob country. Very little color, nevertheless until we entered the area around the monastery. And there, I found that the eastern Kentucky spring was about two weeks ahead of southwestern Ohio spring, but still only at the level of what a Yellow Springs season would be at this time of year (if the weather had been typical), and so instead of driving down into the first week of Yellow Springs May, we found the middle of Yellow Springs April at Gethsemani: red quince, forsythia, cherries, daffodils, anemone, violets, small-flowered buttercups, pink magnolias, periwinkles, white trout lilies, ground ivy, spring beauties, dandelions, decorative pears (a few even leafing), toothwort, spicebush, blue fields of deadnettle in full bloom. Redbuds blushing. A seven-petal white flower (just three of them) with rue-like leaves, probably a rue. May apple umbrellas rising, some open and a foot tall, most of them still only a couple of inches.
Dogwood blossoms still small but starting to unravel, the tree line greening, so many buds starting, here and there, some patches of red maples flowering. Toad trillium full size by the creek but not open. Cabbage whites and small blue butterflies. Grackles (the most prominent) and robins and cardinals and mockingbirds calling throughout, chickadees and red-bellied woodpeckers and nuthatches at the feeders. Steady push of a south wind throughout the day, sometimes gusting, gibbous moon in the east at dusk, shining so bright through Vigils the next morning, ceding to the tresses of cirrus clouds. At home this evening, John Blakelock left a message: “The toads have begun to sing.”
2015: More transplanting of lilies today. By the shed, the bluebells are budded, the bloodroot holds. Daffodil and squills still at full bloom. Box elder tree flowering. Peonies: some gangly to almost a foot. Evening primrose sprouts about an inch tall, started from seed last summer. Goldenrod sprouts – also seeded last summer – have leaves an inch long. Now the large ferns show green knuckles, and some of Jeanie’s ferns by the redbud tree have curled through the mulch. In the southwest garden, the established astilbes are up about six inches. But in the dooryard east garden, no sign of the new plants set in last fall. The first red-winged blackbird sang and fed in the yard through the afternoon, the first red-wing here for years.
2016: Mild in the 50s, light rain: First cardinal called at 5:03 a.m.
2017: Spain: to San Marcos near Santiago: Only red clover among the thinning suburban vegetation. At one rest area, sycamore leaves quite well developed, maybe to two or three inches. Space slips by more easily the more we walk and our bodies become used to movement, The correlation between landscape and mind melds. The world is no longer separated from us by machine or walls. We are simple figments of the surrounding roads and woods. In reality, we and they are porous, almost interchangeable.
2018: Cold continues, but the pussy willows, full of pollen, have begun to fall on the sidewalk near the bittersweet. In front of a house on Dayton Street: the first red and violet creeping phlox is open.
2019: Today was the first day of the year to make 80 degrees. Pussy willow catkins almost all down. The first dandelions seen on the path south of Ellis, bright in the endless rows of deadnettle (Lamium purpureum), lanky bittercress inside them. The grass of the arboretum there is April green. A red admiral butterfly seen on the path (and Leslie saw one yesterday at her sister’s)! The peach trees are leafing at home, and bluebell buds are showing a little blue. Leslie reported one coyote howl!
2020: Lil’s Norway maple is flowering. I found bamboo seven inches high, one fern sixteen inches. Now all the hostas are up, either just a nub or fully leafed. The knotweed is surging, some up to two feet. The forsythia bushes by my window are closing off the street with green. Tulips open or opening all over town.
In a flash, I realized that the world was not formed by random accidents, chance, and fate but that behind the dizzying diversity is a seamless stream of predictable patterns.
Adrian Bejan