April 13th
The 103rd Day of the Year
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
A. E. Housman
Sunrise/set: 7:01/8:11
Day’s Length: 13 hours 10 minutes
Average High/Low: 61/41
Average Temperature: 50
Record High: 85 – 1887
Record Low: 19 – 1950
Weather
Chances of a high in the 70s are 20 percent today, and 60s come 40 percent of the time. Look for cooler 50s on 25 percent of the afternoons, and for chilly 40s fifteen percent of the time. The 13th is often cloudy, with totally overcast conditions four days in ten. Rain falls one day out of three, but frost usually stays away, burning sprouts only one morning in five.
Natural Calendar
Japanese knotweed catches up with the rhubarb (just about big enough for a small pie). Water rushes and purple loosestrife, water lilies and pickerel plants have suddenly produced foliage. Snakehead mushrooms, which have a tall, light-colored stalk and a small, dark cap, begin to appear now in the Middle Atlantic region, and their season typically lasts through the end of the month. Black and gray morel mushrooms generally come up at this time of the month, too. Most species of resident birds have paired up by this point in the year, and many are feeding their nestlings.
Daybook
1981: Bleeding hearts have pink buds.
1982: Honeybees are out gathering pollen from the pussy willows. Leaves starting on the fruit trees.
1983: Forsythia is leafing now.
1984: Bees in the pussy willows again. First dandelion. Magnolias just start to emerge.
1985: First cherry blossoms. First forget-me-nots in the garden.
1986: Late magnolias hold on in a few places. Bees were all over the cherry tree today. Several cabbage butterflies seen. First apple blossom in the yard. Red quince is full. Forsythia fading. Most trees seem to be leafing.
1988: First cabbage butterflies seen today. First cherry petals show at the top of the tree. Middle Prairie is purple with purple deadnettle. Violets are early full bloom, daffodils are fading quickly. Apple leaves an inch long, redbuds beginning. Some magnolias gone at Wilberforce, some full bloom. Winter cress is budding. The tree line has soft green patches where box elders are strongest.
1991: Bleeding hearts well into bloom, but still tightly clustered and low.
1993: Daffodils and hyacinths peak of bloom.
1996: Off to the Luddite Conference in Barnesville, Ohio. Standing on the street before at 5:10 a.m. after packing the car, I heard the high-pitched chant of American toads. East on the freeway, the roadside grass was greening. Daffodils were in full bloom in wayside pockets near Columbus. Seven migrating cedar waxwings seen at rest stop near Cambridge, all eating the centers out of last year’s crab apples.
At the Quaker meeting house in Barnesville, spring beauties and dandelions were in full bloom in the lawn. Down the hill near a little stream, coltsfoot was flowering in the sun. I found a bloodroot open, two skunk cabbage plants, one just blooming, another with a six-inch leaf.
1998: Early apple blossom time begins. End of pear flowers and forsythia and mid season daffodils. Serviceberry flowers disappeared about April 9. Full bloom forget-me-nots at King’s Yard downtown.
1999: Frog croaks off and on around 9:30 a.m. Now full bloom spring beauties. Scillas fade, daffodils too, and grape hyacinths so quickly.
2000: First winter cress plant open along the bike path. Blackbirds singing constantly on either side as I ride along, and cardinals flying back and forth in front of me. At home: scilla becoming overgrown in the east garden.
2001: At South Glen with Mike and the puppies: call of the field sparrow identified, high-pitched, frequency increasing at the end of its song “like the way a ping pong ball speeds up as it comes to the end of its bounce,” Mike said.
2002: First carpenter bee of the year came out of the woodwork today.
2003: First strawberry flower in the garden. Bleeding hearts are budding. Very last pussy willow catkin falls.
2004: Last year’s crabapples falling to the sidewalk along Dayton Street, pushed from their branches by the emerging leaves.
2006: Stopped at Jacoby to let out a rat I’d caught last night in the laundry room. Walked down into the wetlands, the sun emerging over the hill, found cowslip in full bloom, a few bluebells, skunk cabbage big and fat, buckeyes with young red leaves and well budded, an early wild phlox, touch-me-nots with four large leaves. A pair of nuthatches seen, flickers calling throughout. Two deer crossed Grinnell Road in front of me as I drove home, then a wild turkey. On Dayton Street, the serviceberry trees have come out all the way, and it’s full bloom time for them and village pears. Carpenter bees have been out for several days scouting the eaves. Bleeding hearts have hearts, pussy willow catkins hanging on. Early tulips full, and the first midseason varieties seen in town.
2007: Inventory at the end of the early April cold spell. I went looking for damage from almost a week of nights in the 20s. New leaves burned on box elder, maple, crab apple, redbuds, ginkgo, viburnum, spirea, climbing hydrangea, mock orange, hobblebush, serviceberry, privet, purple lilac, forsythia, tree of heaven, peach, tea roses. Korean lilac unhurt, and Dutch iris, asters, penstemon, most tulips and daffodils, monarda, sweet rocket, poppies, sweet Williams, oregano, dead nettle, wood and other hyacinths, helibores, ramps, bluebells, waterleaves, thistles, mallow, mint, achillea, stonecrop, azalea, hostas. Daylilies and purple coneflower foliage burned but seems all right. Covered Asiatic lilies were ok, uncovered ones frozen back. Astilbes and bleeding hearts melted in the frost. Very little prospect for any apple blossoms or redbud bloom this year.
2009: Pear flowers are starting to cede to leaves in downtown Wilmington.
2010: The circle garden is full and lush now with solid banks of purple violets and deadnettle. There are buds on the large allium stalks. Very first leaves push out on the trumpet vine stalks. Hops vines are at least four feet long. A small bright green bee noticed near the porch, an Augochlorella or a sweat bee.
2011: The pussy willow, with a few catkins left, has started to leaf. Dandelions are gaining momentum at Peggy’s and about town.
2012: Yellow Springs to Gethsemani Abbey in west-central Kentucky. When I left home, almost all the apple trees in the park had lost their petals, all the snowball viburnums were full, the tulips and daffodils in their last days, the maples were full of fat seeds, and lawns were full of maple or box-elder seeds turning into trees. Redbud trees at least half gone. The first honeysuckles were starting to come in downtown next to Sam and Eddie’s store. In the countryside, the fields are mostly plowed and disked, ready to be seeded or already planted. Many lilacs were almost gone. Silver olives and wintercress common along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road, and many high oaks coming in.
By the time I reached Cincinnati, fifty miles from home, I saw locusts and honeysuckles in full bloom, and by Lexington the high canopy was definitely filling in with luminous leaves, globes of pale-green light sometimes emerging from less advanced woodlots. From Lexington west, wild cherry trees, locusts and honeysuckles in bloom dominated the roadsides, the flowers creamy white in the April green. Red and white clover along the highway. Thistles were tall and budded near Bardstown, and turning down toward the monastery, I saw iris and roses and yellow poplars in bloom, and then I heard the constant call of the abbey mockingbirds.
I walked the fields after I got settled into my room. The inventory: late hawthorn flowers, full locusts, dogwoods and tulip trees, redbuds – interestingly enough – still holding on like in Yellow Springs, blue-tailed dragonflies and black dragon flies at the pond, golden iris in the swampy shoreline of the pond, full ranunculus, cress, very late chickweed all tawny and gone to seed, pink fleabane every where, yellowing deadnettle (and in the middle of the field I noted, as I had more than once this spring, how I must define time and season by where I am and what is happening rather than by relationship to a calendar), star of Bethlehem, shamrock flowers, scraggly bellwort, wild strawberry, blue speedwell, poison ivy leaves recently remerged, the plants covering the ground and about three-inches high, the monastery chestnuts all burned from a recent frost, thin-leafed bluets were the most common deep woods wildflower, a few spring beauties found in bloom, white-flowering sedum by one of the statues, blue violet and white violets, a few Jack-in-the-pulpit plants in bloom, May apples full bloom, poke weed up to four feet, cow parsnip also tall, ground ivy full, small toads about an inch long hopping along the swamp floor, blackberry bushes starting to blossom, one black swallowtail, many blues and sulphurs seen, and many smaller orange and brown butterflies, boneset with five-inch leaves, hemlock very bush and three feet tall, rust on raspberry bushes, yarrow budded. Grasses were fully developed, and I gathered a few.
2013: Gethsemani: Robin singsong begins outside my monastery window at 4:35 a.m. South of the graveyard, the foliage of three large sweet gum trees is about a fourth of its mature size. An apple tree and a cherry there are in full bloom. Willow catkins are aging, willow leaves about an inch long. Fleabane with a heavy stem like Robin’s fleabane just coming into bloom. A miniature grape hyacinth flower is growing about the enclosed garden, does not seem domesticated. In a small tree on the way to the monastery entrance, a dove sitting on her nest.
2014: Gethsemani: In the gusting wind this morning, I lay down at 4:45, no birds singing. I woke up at 5:00 to full robinsong. Some blooming redbuds, several crab apples, and more full pears seen in the countryside. A dove is sitting in the same nest as last year on this date. In the courtyard, maples are seeding, green and red.
2015: On the way downtown, I passed the first pear tree with blossoms. Full bloom dandelions throughout the area.
2016: The last pachysandra dissolved overnight. Lily-of-the-valley about three inches high, ready to be transplanted. The dooryard garden is in transition to its hosta phase, simply looks like weeds at the moment. Walking at John Bryant State Park: Full bloom of trillium grandiflorum, bluebells, toothwort, meadow rue, a few white violets, late scattered hepatica, late but prominent Dutchman’s britches, the “honeysuckle high” spring filling in the undergrowth, box elders leafing.
2018: The first red quince opened at High and Limestone Streets. Jill’s first red tulip is cracking (fully open by afternoon), her peach tree has three flowers and her star magnolia is fully open (after frost killed the first blossoms a week ago). An unfamiliar bird call as I walked home this morning: “tee tee” then a warble about two notes lower than the “tee.” Periwinkle blossoms common now. An old purple ………by Janet’s redbud, fragment for Jeanie from years past. First mosquito in the back door this afternoon, the first time the temperature has reached close to 80 degrees.
2018: A major winter storm brings blizzards across the northern states, rain to the Lower Midwest. John is snowed in at his hotel in Minneapolis. The star magnolia across the street is fully open, missing the hard frost by a week. Peggy’s pear tree and a few buds on Neysa’s ancient peach tree are opening. Silver maples shedding throughout town now. The circle garden’s daffodils are lush in early full.
At the Monastery of St. Clare, spring beauties, toothwort blanketing the woods floor. One trout lily found. The Cornus mas fading.. Along the highway between Dayton’s southern suburbs and Cincinnati: pear trees in full flower. Jill got her first mosquito bite in the night, and Rick Walkee saw the first cabbage white butterfly in the afternoon and noticed, too, that all his violets bloomed throughout the day.
2019: At the Mill habitat, Dutchman’s britches, toothwort, spring beauties, Virginia bluebells, some violet cress in full bloom, trillium grandiflorum and May apples budded. Across from the Covered Bridge, cowslips all open. In the yard, all the daffodils balance at their apex, holding well in the mild days and nights. One red quince unraveling. Blushing redbuds seen in town, and several patches of creeping phlox in full flower. At the Monastery of St. Clare, all was the same as last year, plus two yellow violets, several crowfoot buttercups (Ranunculus sceleratus) and budded garlic mustard. Large patches of dandelions seen throughout.
2020: Another hard rain overnight and hard wind this morning, serviceberry petals and pear petals and star magnolia petals in the street. In the fields around the pond, dandelions and henbit remain in full flower while winter cress is budding. At home, garlic mustard is heading up, bluebells opening more fully, the mid-season daffodils and the sweet cherry tree keeping their blossoms.
The hawthorn whitens, and the juicy groves
Put forth their buds unfolding by degrees,
Till the whole leafy forest stands displayed
In full luxuriance, to the sighing gales,
Where the deer rustle through the twining brake,
And the birds sing concealed.
James Thomson