April 22nd
The 112th Day of the Year
In the flowers find a solace,
Fleeting cure for every sadness,
Fragrant physic for your longing,
Certain aid for loneliness.
Celtus
(bf)
Sunrise/set: 5:49/7:22
Day’s Length: 13 hours 33 minutes
Average High/Low: 65/43
Average Temperature: 54
Record High: 86 – 1985
Record Low: 28 – 1907
Weather
Fifteen percent of the highs today exceed 80 degrees, 15 percent are in the 70s, thirty percent in the 60s, thirty percent in the 50s, just 10 percent in the 40s. There is only a 15 percent chance of frost this morning. The sky is completely overcast one day out of three, and rain falls one day in four. And this is the last date of the season when the chances of snow are even close to ten percent.
The Weather in the Week Ahead
Late Spring arrives this week, the warm weather creating unmistakable markers in the progress of spring. Among those landmarks: The 26th and the 30th record freezing temperatures less than five percent of the time, the first time that has happened since late September. After the 22nd, chances of snow drop below five percent. Chances of a cold day in the 30s or 40s fall to only ten percent on the 22nd, then plummet another eight percent on the 26th. Beginning on April 27th, highs in the 90s become possible, and the chances of a high in the 80s pass the 20 percent mark. The chances of a high above 70s degrees are now 50/50 or better for the first time this year.
April 29th and 30th are usually the mildest days this week, with the 30th bringing a 90 percent chance of highs above 60 degrees for the first time since late September. The driest days this time of year are April 26 and 27, each with just a 20 percent chance of rain. The wettest days: April 29th and 30th – both carrying a 55 percent chance of precipitation.
Natural Calendar
Now new beggarticks, touch-me-nots, and great ragweed have four leaves. May apples are a foot tall and buckeye buds have unraveled. Skunk cabbage leaves are over a foot tall, half a foot wide, in the swamps. Ragwort blooms, and garlic mustard forms clumps, seed heads visible, still tightly bunched. Watercress has filled the shallow brooks. Peony stems are a foot and a half tall, leaves developing and spreading out, turning from red to green. Cabbage butterflies are out laying eggs on the new cabbage, kale, collards and Brussels sprouts. Mulberry, locust, tree of heaven, viburnum, sweetgum and ginkgo send out their first leaves..
Red-bellied woodpeckers, towhees, catbirds and thrushes sing in the woods. Grackles settle in to feed and mate. Buzzards roost and turkeys gobble. Mallards pair up, and geese nest near parking lots and riverbanks. Bees, flies and mosquitoes emerge. Rhubarb climbs taller than your boots. Worms breed in the wet earth, and the first young grass snakes hatch and explore the undergrowth.
Early tulips continue to flower, but the seasons of grape hyacinths, daffodils and scilla are ending. Many of the earliest Middle Spring wild flowers – bloodroot, purple cress, twinleaf, toothwort, Dutchman’s britches, and periwinkle – have completed their blossoming periods.
Redbuds complement the crab apples as the land gets ready for May: wild phlox, wild geranium, wild ginger, celandine, spring cress, sedum, golden Alexander, thyme-leafed speedwell and common fleabane are budding and blooming. Sweet clover and wild lettuce are already a foot high. Hosta and lily-of-the-valley foliage are sometimes fully up from the ground, poison ivy vines four inches tall, dock and great mullein and comfrey leaves eight inches long.
The Stars
The Milky Way fills the western horizon as Orion sets just behind the sun. Now the middle of the heavens are in their prime spring planting position, Castor and Pollux to the west, Leo with its bright Regulus directly overhead, and Arcturus dominating the east. At morning chore time, Vega is the brightest star above you. Arcturus is the brightest in the western sky. Deep along the northern horizon the brightest star is Capella.
Daybook
1984: Jacoby, 55 degrees: Buckeye leaves emerging, leafcup full and lush, four and six leaves on the fat touch-me-not sprouts. First mosquitoes, first cowslips. Hepatica getting new leaves, coming to the end of its cycle, ragwort tall with purple buds, Dutchman’s britches and bloodroot still holding, yellow-flowered toad trillium found, winter cress budding.
1985: Late Spring measurably closer: At South Glen, sweet clover, parsnips, and wild lettuce are a foot high already, waterleaf and sweet rockets have buds, four leaves now on next year’s garlic mustard, white spring cress opens, clumps of June’s cinquefoil leaves are common, locust and grape vines well into leafing, sweet Cicely foliage like delicate lace. Garden chives blooming today, first tall grass heads up in the yard.
1986: First buds on the raspberries. Groundsel seen in full bloom by the roadside near Wilberforce. Ferns emerging.
1987: Day flower and first mid-season hosta foliage is coming up. Maple flowers fall all at once in front of the house, cover the car. Redbuds suddenly full bloom, apples too. Patch of watercress flowering along Grinnell. Black walnut trees leafing out early.
1988: Cherry tree full bloom today. First apple blossoms. First celandine opens. Lily of the valley: four inches. Lilacs early bloom in various places. Very first wild columbine. Wood betony and golden alexander have been out for several days at the Cascades. First bellwort, first wild geranium, some mock orange buds. Skippers seen. Jack-in-the-pulpit common, trillium early full bloom. Downtown, first pears drop their petals in a windy 80-degree afternoon.
1989: May apples are budding. First swamp buttercup seen, very first ragwort opens. Pussy willow leaves racing with the box elders, both about half size. Entire fields of yellow groundsel along the way to Fairborn. First water cress in flower, first garlic mustard, wild ginger. Toothwort and violet cress holding. Ruby-crowned kinglet female in the yard, singing and being answered. Green ash flowers. Around the lawn, blue eyes, chickweed, purple deadnettle, violets dandelions, spring beauties full bloom, comfrey leaves a foot long. Poplar leaves half an inch, some garlic mustard 12 to 18 inches. Mulberry buds greening.
1990: Middle Spring holding on: bluebells still full bloom, hepatica and spring beauties, toothwort, rue anemone, large-flowered trillium. Garlic mustard is growing up around them, though, and the canopy is thickening overhead. First bellwort, columbine, celandine. Last few Dutchman’s britches. Early betony, early winter cress, golden alexander. Some phlox. In town, flowering crabs finally open wide. Ginkgo, locust and gum trees begin to leaf.
1991: Red-winged blackbirds mating, building nests, singing on fences all the way from Yellow Springs to Wisconsin.
1993: Winter cress budding at the golf course. Bleeding hearts have formed. Blue jays seem to become louder each day.
1995: In the east garden, bleeding hearts are well formed now, and Chris’s dwarf iris is showing buds. The grape hyacinths planted with the daffodils last spring are in full bloom, Mrs. Hurie’s blue speedwell has come into full bloom, along with the dead nettle which has spread and makes for rich color in the transition phase to the Late Spring flowers. The last scilla are bowed but hold. Walking up the street to the triangle park, I see the pines have started their new growth, some trees having pushed out tiny cones, others with fresh green needles at the tips of their branches. In town, many pears have exchanged their flowers for leaves, and the forsythia in front of the house shows almost no gold at all. Red quince still full. Thyme-leafed speedwell found while mowing the lawn.
1996: The weather was cool until the 11th this year, then Middle Spring came in, and everything got out of hand. In the past week I’ve seen bats (three in the back yard last night). Pears opened completely. Redbuds started. Daffodils peaked, tulips came in and now are almost in full bloom. Bleeding hearts made hearts. Bird calls became even louder, more raucous in the mornings. Hosta came up. The west garden ferns came up. Jack-in-the-pulpit sent up its huge fat head. At the Cascades, rue anemone, toothwort and large-flowered trilliums were in full bloom, early meadow rue and ragwort and bellwort almost ready, wild phlox budding too. Ginger leaves have unfolded from the ground. Spring beauties filled Antioch lawn. Box elders suddenly flowered, some leafing. The west shrub line thickened with leaves, began to shut out the view of Dayton Street. The yard and all the grass in town took on the exciting vibrancy, intensity of April green, glowed with life, as though its usually invisible aura could no longer be contained and took on visible shape.
1998: Tadpoles have left the safety of their eggs now and have gone out one by one to explore the pond. My ginkgo leaves are an inch across outside the window. The ash are also an inch, and the sweet gum tree paces both. Some box elders have leafed, and the lower growth is almost complete. Silver olives are well developed along the freeway south.
1999: Madison, Wisconsin to Crookston, Minnesota near the Canadian border: At Madison, the trees well along, maybe half of Yellow Springs. Some green persists to Minneapolis, although the birches are really the only leafing trees past Eau Claire. In the hills, a clear tint of gold and red, like Kentucky or Tennessee in late march. Around the Twin Cities, forsythia and tulips. Minneapolis to Saint Cloud: flowers and leaves disappear. Roadsides grasses half brown. From St. John’s at Collegeville north, the landscape is almost completely dull. At a rest stop near Alexandria, one lady bug in the sun, basal clusters of motherwort foliage, some purple buds on a viburnum. Near Fergus Falls, only poplars budding (but leafed in central Wisconsin). In northern Minnesota, farmers are working the great flat potato and beet fields. Crookston: large buds on the cottonwoods.
2003: First yellow swallowtail of the year seen at the Covered Bridge.
2004: Wood hyacinths and honeysuckles budded. Peach flowers gone. Pink quince coming in.
2006: Dianna Matthews called to report a cat running along with a bullfrog (“Six to eight-inch legs!” she exclaimed.) dangling from its mouth.
2008: In Wilmington, several crabapples seen in full bloom, and lots of garlic mustard seen open by the roadside south of Xenia. Redbuds full. Pears and forsythia still hold, but the flowers share their branches with new leaves. American toads were singing in the distance as I walked Bella after dark – the first time I’ve heard them this year.
2009: Wilmington pears are completely green now. White star hyacinths seen in bloom along Stafford Street.
2011: Rain continues, flooding in the area. Five cowbirds at the feeder this afternoon while I was talking to Tat, the first cowbirds in months. The new tulips are reaching full bloom, leaves thickening both high and low. Winter cress seen bright gold on the way to Dayton.
2012: Below-average temperatures may have stalled the precipitous advance of Middle Spring, shortening the span between the typical state of nature at this time of year and the accelerated state of this particular season. Still, I found the first locust flower on the side of the street today, locusts having moved up from Cincinnati in the past few days. From Goshen, Indiana, Judy wrote: “We were rewarded for venturing out on a cold and blustery day by being treated to acres of blooming trilliums–the huge ones, little nodding ones, and pink ones that I’d never seen before. We also saw a blooming May apple (not many with flowers out), false rue anemone, wood anemone, sweet cicely, and bouncing bet in addition to the usual henbit and common buttercup.”
2013: A cardinal woke me up at 4:45 this morning, the day clear and chilly, frost on the grass. At South Glen this afternoon, ginger leaves were visible, but no flowers. Chickweed, pale, tall, full flowered, covered most of the woods floor, spreading up into the hills in glens of green. Bluebells, violets, toothwort, spring beauties, toad trillium, wild phlox, crowfoot. Buds on the ragwort, nodding trillium, winter cress, buckeyes. A few rockets and garlic mustard plants heading. Parsnips one to two feet. At home, Jeanie’s white bleeding heart has opened up all the way, and Moya’s pink bleeding heart is in full bloom.
2014: The serviceberry flowers are coming down now, should be gone in a day or two. In the yard, bluebells and lungwort continue in full bloom. Daffodils are declining. The Anna Belle and Indomitable Sprit hydrangeas have small, half-inch leaves now. Some ferns are up a few inches, but others haven’t started, especially along the north wall. The east dooryard garden, all its snowdrops, crocus and aconites completed, waits for the hosta (just a couple of inches tall today) to cover them. Hops found creeping into the north gardens. I planted milkweed sprouts near the old wall. The pileated woodpecker continues to call; I’ve heard it for weeks. Around the village: the full bloom of dandelions in lawns and waysides; the first flowering of crab apples; catkins on river birches (but not Jeanie’s in the yard); dogwood buds swelling; ginkgo and grape vine leaves both just coming out a little, pacing one another.
2015: Rose of Sharon is starting to leaf at Moya’s. Lily-of-the-valley budding. Maple seed wings falling to Stafford Street.
2016: Pink quince petals falling to the pond. The river birch has one-inch leaves. Weeds multiply throughout the garden in their late-spring surge. The allium stalks grow taller, their buds fatter. The viburnum on the north side of the house has its first white blossoms. Now the red crab apple petals have started to come down near the dooryard garden, and when Jill and I went north to Delaware, Ohio above Columbus, all the downtown streets were speckled with apple petals, the chilly wind spinning them around us. Several bright pink azaleas wide open at the university here.
2017: Spain: to Dumbria across valleys and mountains, lined with white, slowly spinning wind turbines, a drier habitat, hillsides covered with yellow ginestra and the prickly pea-flowered shrub. Eucalyptus and pine groves, blackberry hedges, brooks with the clearest water; some pasture, very little farmland. Plants included violets, the tall flowering plantains, a little mallow, periwinkle, buttercups, a foxglove-like plant in bloom (had been budding days before).
In one stream near Olvieroa, white blossoms on a fine-leafed water plant reminiscent of watercress but much more delicate. Toward Dumbria, in a few shady corners, I found three-petaled white dayflowers. In town, late pink magnolias, full lavender lilacs and bright roseate azaleas, late flowering fruit trees. Ants seen migrating along one path. A row of black walnut trees just starting to leaf and flower. Hawthorn trees in bloom yesterday and today as we descended further north and west toward the coast and Muxia.
2018: Keuka Lake in New York to Yellow Springs: Early Spring into Middle Spring, the land near Ithaca all brown, no roadside green at all, a few small jonquils open, patches of snow, and the landscape remains at that season until Cleveland, and then going south through northern Ohio, the grass becomes bright April green, pear trees bloom, fields of dandelions appear. At home, peach trees and pears are white with blossoms, and the grass (full of violets) is long enough to cut. The gangly sweet cherry tree has a few blossoms. The daffodils and grape hyacinths are still at their peak, the koi are hungry and the honeysuckle is leafing out enough to provide a little protection from the street.
2019: Ginkgo and Sweetgum seen leafing. Maple flowers to seed throughout the neighborhood. Forsythia and pink magnolia flowers falling (the star magnolias already down). Honeysuckles are budding. Decorative grasses up at least a foot in some yards. Early viburnums open. Ferns have surged in the past week, some up to two feet. Grass cut today, leaving the carpets of violets. Leslie reports seeing a tiger swallowtail, a copper underwing moth, gnats and then blue-gray gnatcatchers today.
2020: Earth Day, and I look back for markers. I thought that Jeanie’s bleeding heart had been overgrown by hostas, but there it was this morning, delicate among the spent scilla with seven small white hearts, linking me with the 1980s and 90s near this date. When one thing is happening, something else is happening, too. Without the context of other details, the markers don’t work. But without the use of markers, all the minutiae of the seasons themselves scatter, ungathered.
The moon was created for the counting of the days.
Hebrew Midrash Text