April 14th
The 104th Day of the Year
April to perfection, such a sentiment of spring everywhere. The sky is partly overcast, the air moist, just enough so to bring out the odors, a sweet perfume of bursting, growing things. One could almost eat the turf like a horse…. The soil calls for the plow…the garden calls for the spade, the vineyard calls for the hoe. From all about the farm voices call, Come and do this, or do that. At night, how the ‘peepers’ pile up the sound!
John Burroughs
Sunrise/set: 5:59/7:12
Day’s Length: 13 hours 13 minutes
Average High/Low: 62/40
Average Temperature: 51
Record High: 84 – 1887
Record Low: 22 – 1950
Weather
Rain occurs seven years in a decade on this date, making it the wettest day in my April weather history. Highs reach above 70 degrees 30 percent of the time, make it into the 60s on 40 percent of the afternoons, into the 50s ten percent, and the cold 40s the remaining 20 percent. Frost strikes just 15 percent of the mornings.
Natural Calendar
The Great Dandelion and Violet Bloom is the most common and the most radical marker for the third week of Middle Spring Of course a few dandelions started blooming in February and March – and often they bloom year around. Now, however, comes the Great Dandelion and Violet Flowering that begins in the Deep South – where Middle Spring comes more than a month earlier than it does in the North – and it spreads up through the Border States like robins, reaching the 40th Parallel, the lateral midline of the United States in April, and then creeps up to the northern states in May.
Whenever it occurs, the Great Dandelion and Violet Flowering turns lawns and waysides golden and purple with their blossoms and announces the greening of the high trees: the maples, oaks, mulberries, locusts, and ginkgoes sending out their first leaves. It trumpets tulip season and the budding of peonies in the garden. The Great Dandelion and Violet Bloom in the alleys and along the freeways lets you know that – if you had time to take to the woods – you could find hepatica, periwinkle, toad trillium, cowslip, rue anemone and buttercups in flower. In the vegetable garden, you might find fresh asparagus, new herbs for seasoning, maybe lettuce leaves long enough for salad.
And above golden fields of dandelion and violet flowers, the more exotic, yet no less powerful, marker of the third week of Middle Spring: all the fruit trees coming in. Following the earliest cherries and plums and pears and peaches, the roseate, white and red crab apples open and reveal the season from New Orleans to Maine and Minneapolis, telling time far better and more beautifully than any paper or digital calendar.
Daybook
1982: Dutchman’s britches past its prime, woods full of flowers that have butterfly-shaped foliage and chalice-like white flowers, eight petals: twinleaf. Ginger emerging with its small, soft, arrowhead leaf. Buckeyes leaves unraveling. Maple hulls fall to the street.
1985: Covered Bridge: First cowslip, first Greek valerian, first ragwort. Violets, phlox, toothwort, and bluebells perfect full bloom. Dutchman’s britches about a week past its prime. Violet cress fading. Garlic mustard and sweet rocket stalks shooting up. Toads chanting at the Covered Bridge. Some touch-me-nots have four leaves, some six. First cherry and quince blossoms appear, first forget-me-not blooms in the yard. Mulberry buds greening.
1987: First cowslip, first strawberry flowers, first ragwort. Red-winged blackbirds nesting in the goldenrod fields. Grackles have been mating for a week now, bobbing up and down, spreading their wings, building nests. Grass long enough to cut. Comfrey leaves eight to nine inches. Apple leaves a half inch to an inch long. Box elders, maples flowering everywhere. Peonies are a foot tall now, leaves unfolding, bleeding hearts not far behind.
1989: Cascades: the cold has kept bloodroot from fading, angel wing leaves pierced by the chalice of white petals. September’s zigzag goldenrod is three inches high, with three to six leaves. The American colombo has six-inch leaves. Wood betony, two inches, tightly clustered together, heading. First thick, three-fingered golden alexander is up. Delicate, early white rue anemone in bloom. Bellwort three inches. Trillium grandiflorum: first one bloomed today. Spring beauties early bloom. Red foliage of spicebush paces the honeysuckles. Violets full at Antioch. Dutchman’s britches declining. Bradford pears downtown leafing before they blossom. First cabbage butterfly seen today.
1991: First daddy longlegs, maybe a fourth grown, seen in the pile of poplar wood. At the nursery, barberry was in full bloom, yellow flowers, serviceberry full, white, plums and sand cherries full, some viburnum too.
1993: First cowslip blooming by the Covered Bridge. Willows greening, soft color to the lower woods as honeysuckle leaves get bigger. Upper tree line reddening with buds, box elders and maples in full bloom, bleeding hearts shoot up in the warm afternoon. Pussy willow catkins, puffed out with pollen, fall and scatter in the wind. In the east garden, the last of the snow crocus disappear. Beside them, purple coneflower leaves are up an inch or two, thin astilbe stems unravel, veronica thickens.
1994: High 75. First cabbage butterfly seen today. At the Cascades, hepatica and violet cress in full bloom, toothwort beginning, Solomon’s plume or seal are up several inches, early meadow rue is up to a foot too, pacing the growth of the columbine, flower clusters forming. Along Grinnell Road, box elders, buckeyes, roses, black raspberries, and honeysuckles are turning the undergrowth pale green, fleshing out the winter branches. At home, bluebells have grown up quickly, but still not budding. More early tulips open (first the yellow, then the orange). Comfrey a couple inches high now. Asiatic lily clusters are up. Violets bloom here and at Antioch. Apple trees have been leafing for several days. John called yesterday from northern Minnesota; he found the first wood tick, his rhubarb was just beginning to show its stems, and frogs were croaking.
1996: Coming back from Barnesville across central Ohio: a red and gold tint to the mountains from the flowering trees.
1998: Weeds out of control now, I should have started pulling them ten days ago. First garlic mustard seen open along Grinnell. Full apples and red buds and dogwoods now, and all lilacs and tulips. Center of late Middle Spring. Tulip tree paces ginkgoes and willows.
2000: First ichneumons seen at home and at work. Almost all the hosta varieties have emerged, some leafing at about six inches. Asiatic lilies are up about four inches. Carpenter bees starting to look for nests along the west roof line, more of them lying dead too at the back porch. The pond toad finally sings briefly after maybe two weeks of silence.
2002: Snow-on-the-mountain has emerged in the east garden. Buds on the sweet rockets, clematis, bleeding hearts, and azaleas. Peonies and some hosta unraveling in the west garden. Astilbe leafing out, eight inches tall under the apple tree. Asiatic lilies up to six inches in the north garden. Honeysuckle getting enough leaves to form a barrier against the street. Black raspberry fully leafed. Grass past ready to cut. Cabbage butterflies seen all week. Bats in the evenings now, and toad song coming from the river. Snakes have taken over the pond.
2005: Knotweed knee high. Some fresh bamboo stalks are four inches tall. Periwinkle continues full. Purple fields of purple deadnettle, yellow fields of dandelions. Crab apples emerging. Lil’s maple full bloom. Hydrangeas and viburnums have been leafing for a week now, their leaves at least an inch. Silver olives coming out. Full bloom of the serviceberry trees across from Don and Miri’s house on Dayton street (those trees parallel the cycle of the pears). Foxtail grass full bloom in Dayton. Blackberries leafing, wild roses and honeysuckles half leafed. Some pink magnolia petals falling in the wind. Peonies past knee high and budding.
2006: At South Glen, a flock of wood ducks sitting in a tree. Spring beauties blooming below them, a few wild phlox and bloodroot. American toads or tree frogs loud upstream. Geese screaming out their warning to the dogs all along the river path. In the yard, the grackles have been clucking throughout the morning. The grass is getting long. At the north fence, the red quince is flowering, and some of the forsythia is leafing. Apples are just starting to open at the park. Along High Street, coral berries have all withered, and most of them have been pushed off their branches by new leaves. Above them, the bittersweet berries are also almost gone. Rachel’s ginkgo buds are starting to turn to leaves. The sweet gum near Lawson place has developed huge buds.
2008: Walking at South Glen with Mike: Bloodroot, purple cress, and spring beauties in bloom. Toothwort and toad trillium budded. Wild ginger leaves are unraveling from the soil, and buckeye leaves have opened, some revealing bud clusters. Sweet rockets very tall and bushy, garlic mustard starting to rise. Geese patrolling their nesting areas. Towhee calling. At home, more lilies coming up, bleeding hearts with small heart buds. Pussy willow catkins falling, almost all gone. Greg’s lily-of-the-valley has just emerged.
2009: The late-planted crocus are finally winding down, and the daffodils and grape hyacinths are starting to fade – but are still full flower. I noticed that all the berries are gone from the coral berry bushes along High Street and that the privet berries are fast disappearing. Oak leaf hydrangeas are just starting to leaf. Some ferns are up three inches. Hobble bush is leafing. One burdock along the front walk has six-inch leaves. The bittercress that bloomed so vigorously last month is now seeding. Lily stalks are up four to six inches now. The mid-season tulips are opening now, and the early orange and yellow tulips are holding in the cool weather.
2010: Covered Bridge habitat: Soft carpet of chickweed across the open areas, skunk cabbage leaves full size, the last toothworts, early phlox, budded ragwort and May apples, one blooming Jacob’s ladder, full bluebells (but the undergrowth is rising, hiding the ones on the upper slopes), full dandelions and violets. A huge patch of twinleaf foliage near the flat rock landing, a patch to watch next year. In town, full dogwoods, apples, pears. In the yard, the peach flowers are fading. Oak-leaf hydrangea leaves are between two and four inches. Bittercress seeding. First buds on Greg’s lily-of-the valley.
2011: First creeping phlox seen in the plantings in front of the store. On Stafford Street, maples forming seed pods, box elders leafing. Redbuds blushing throughout town. Birdsong not so prominent this evening, robins and an occasional grackle. Rachel’s ginkgo buds leafing. Peach tree almost full bloom. Puschkinia season suddenly over.
2013: Gethsemani: I was up early, my third-floor room window open, waiting for the birds to start singing. Suddenly at 4:26 the robins burst into song, the sound magnified by the architectural valley over which my room is located – the church on the north side, the guest house wall on the west, the monastery garden wall on the east, the cobblestone walkway in the middle. So I heard the birds nine minutes earlier today than yesterday; is that because the temperature was milder, because the wind had shifted or because I wasn’t paying attention yesterday?
Reading back over the daybook notes, I can see how the cold March has put the Gethsemani spring back to what a Yellow Springs spring is usually like in the middle of April. Brother Paul said that this area had been seven degrees below normal in March (versus five degrees below normal in Yellow Springs).
To the woods: Two tiger swallowtails, one mourning cloak, two azures, a polygonia, numerous cabbage whites and several medium-sized black butterflies. One bright green tiger beetle and one dragonfly. Two small webs full of webworms. Small-flowered buttercup, bluets, spring beauties, late toothwort, periwinkles, early Jacob’s ladder, holly, cherry in bloom. May apples range from just emerged to budded. Blackberry leaves an inch long. Throughout the woods, very little canopy coverage, very little foliage in the undergrowth.
2014: Home from Gethsemani: While I was gone, lots of changes: mid to late-season daffodils following the fading early ones; forsythia blooming; early tulips starting at the south wall and around town; pear trees and serviceberry trees starting to flower; pink and star magnolias in full flower; grass getting long enough to cut; Asiatic and Oriental lilies are up a few inches; heliopsis foliage found; peaches are leafing, some budding; late crocus still prominent; all the pussy willow catkins knocked down in the weekend’s gusty wind; no sign of ferns yet; first leaves on the Anna Bell hydrangea; creeping phlox in many yards. The most obvious differences between Gethsemani and Yellow Springs today are the leafing of the pears and the blooming of the redbuds there, compared to pears just starting to flower, and the redbuds not even blushing here. Among my messages: John Blakelock reports toads in full song.
2015: Listening for birds: Early robins at 4:35, song sparrow heard at 5:12, cardinals finally coming in at 5:13, woodpecker tapping, doves, blue jay, titmice waiting until 5:54, grackles and crows at 6:00. In Dayton, I saw a large planting of tulips starting to open. The woods along the river was greening. The decorative red maples was full bloom, seeds dangling. At home, more pears in flower, and all the serviceberry trees,, white as I walked at dusk. In the back yard, the sweet cherry is opening – with more buds than it’s ever had. At Ellis Pond: yellow buckeye and horse chestnut are leafing.
2016: Sun and 60s: As I was walking the north garden, a red admiral butterfly passed me to explore the new sprouts. Along Dayton Street, the fragrant snowball viburnum shrub has put out all its flowers.
2017: Spain: Throughout Santiago de Compostela, fruit trees, azaleas, other flowering shrubs in bloom, daffodils well past prime at the Alameda park, some pear trees fully leafed and a sense of Middle and Late Spring throughout the park.
2019: Storms with high winds today. On the way to Columbus: bright April-green wheat fields and honeysuckle hedges, some cornfields planted. Leslie reports that “goldfinch males are getting black on top of their heads, one almost completely black.” She also heard a gray tree frog and saw a comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album).
The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson