April 23rd
The 113th Day of the Year
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loves, the night that wins
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover,
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Sunrise/set: 5:46/7:21
Day’s Length: 13 hours 35 minutes
Average High/Low: 65/44
Average Temperature: 54
Record High: 86 – 1960
Record Low: 28 – 1956
Weather
There is a 15 percent chance of a high in the 80s today and a 30 percent chance of 70s, making this the first day of the year on which the high rises above 70 forty-five percent of the time. Mild 60s occur another 45 percent of the days, with 50s coming five percent of the time, and 40s another five percent. Rain falls one day out of four, with odds for frost the same. The sun shines two days in three.
Natural Calendar
The transition week to Late Spring ushers in Jack-in-the-Pulpit Season, Miterwort Season, Wild Phlox Season, Celandine, Meadow Parsnip, Wood Betony, Wood Hyacinth, Fleabane, Spring Cress, Nodding Trillium, Larkspur and Bellwort Blooming Season. Garlic Mustard Season is here, covering the deep woods with white and green. It is Leafing Season for ginkgo, tree-of-heaven, oak, pecan, ash, locust, black walnut, and mulberry. Wild Cherry Blossom Season spreads throughout the woodlots, along with Buckeye Blooming Season and Red Horse Chestnut Blooming Season. Clematis Season, Lily-of-the-Valley Season and Star of Bethlehem Season grace the garden. Mock Orange Season, Korean Lilac Season and Honeysuckle Season announce the most fragrant time of year.
Daybook
1982: Found trout lilies and wild phlox open today.
1985: More and more trees filling out this second week of heat. Black walnut, green ash, hackberry, sycamore, catalpa leafing. The white mulberry has green berries. Bridal wreath is blooming, snowball viburnum almost white. Some maples have near full-size leaves.
1986: Heavy frost hurts bleeding hearts, new pussy willow transplants, asparagus, ash, tree of heaven. Two quail ran across my path at South Glen.
1987: Bleeding hearts full bloom. Rose of Sharon leafing.
1988: Lilacs in early bloom at a few spots around town. More butterflies: skippers. Trillium grandiflorum early full at the Cascades. Downtown, pears drop their petals in a windy 80 degrees, then a thunderstorm with scattered hail. First celandine. Lily-of-the-valley is four inches high.
1989: Twinleaf and bloodroot seasons over. Bluebells still in full bloom, but being covered by garlic mustard, Lush undergrowth: every inch of the ground a wildflower of spring or summer. Fields of golden cress along the road to Fairborn.
1991: Petals of the pears washed into the street by the rain of the past few days. Leafing maybe half complete now in the high canopy. Crab apples full flower, as are dogwoods through town. Full bloom time of watercress and dandelions. Garlic mustard still early bloom. Hyacinth mostly gone. Peonies bushy and tall, full size. Only a few forsythia flowers left. Seeds, half an inch long, just forming from the flowers of a maple.
1992: Lilacs open all over town. Ginkgo leaves fully formed, but an eighth of their normal size. East daffodils are finished blooming except for the patch of giants.
1993: Quince opens along Limestone Street, lower canopy of box elders thickening. The tree line shades turn lighter, from red to orange to dapples of a glowing green. Rhubarb seed heads cut back; they were up about six inches, still tight. Lil’s maple full bloom.
1998: First geranium opens in the dooryard. Tadpoles have doubled in size overnight. This is the center of apple and redbud and dogwood bloom. Daisies show their buds. Many high and medium trees are pale green with small leaves. I am estimating that today is approximately where I was in Montgomery, Alabama on the 23rd of March this year. Maybe the trees were a little fuller there.
1999: Crookston, Minnesota: Sun, 60 degrees: First early waves of dandelions, a mourning cloak butterfly. Joan and Jim Chandler say that grass is just starting to color in Thunder Bay, that snow only melted a week ago. They talked about the snowline in Canada in mid April, a line which moves north with spring. At the grave site of my uncle, as we stood praying in the sun, a lady bug flew to John, landed on his sleeve.
2000: John reports first crocus blooming on his farm in northern Minnesota, and peony stalks just pushing out of the ground. And Neysa reports an attack of ticks at her picnic here in Yellow Springs. Around the yard, star of Bethlehem and wood hyacinths are budding, first leafing begins on the rose of Sharon, peony buds are three-fourths of an inch across, some hosta leaves at least a foot high, late tulips still holding, and the apple trees, and the redbuds. There are small hearts on the bleeding hearts. Rhubarb plenty big enough for pie. Two days ago, the first (and only) asparagus spears cut from the garden for supper. Grape vines leafing now, sycamore leaves an inch long plus.
2002: Sycamore leaves just starting. The white oak at my window in Columbus has two-inch leaves. Throughout the landscape, leafing overcomes flowering: Late Spring.
2003: Appledorn tulips, pink azaleas, dead nettle, and bleeding hearts are in full bloom, parallel with the crab apples and redbuds. Forsythia has leafed, the pink quince budded. New bamboo in the south garden is six feet tall. Lungwort moves into its last flowers. The Great Blue and other large hostas are a foot high, as are the Asiatic lilies. Honeysuckle is budded and fully leafed. Leaves on Lil’s maple are about two thirds full size.
2004: Red tulips coming in to complement the red crabapple flowers above them in the east garden.
2005: After three weeks of above-average temperatures, snow this morning, maybe two inches, fat wet flakes. Deep cold forecast for tonight. And Ruby Nicholson called about 11:30 this morning; she’d been out driving in Bryan Park, the most beautiful thing she ever saw, she told me, so beautiful she had to go back and drive through it all again. Then she started talking about how she hadn’t seen cows switching their tails since last October, and how she’d been watching all winter and the cows hadn’t switched their tails. On April 20th, she said, she had seen cows standing knee deep in mud, and she saw one of them switch its tail, but that was all, just once. She says she’s got everyone she knows watching to see when the cows really start switching their tails. I’m supposed to watch, too. And so she also says that the next moon ought to be called the Cow Switching Tail Moon, and I’ll name it that for her every spring from now on. Ruby will be 95 this spring, and Jeanie and I said that if we could be as happy at 95 as Ruby was this morning, we wouldn’t mind at all getting old.
2006: To Cincinnati for the flower show: In Dayton and Yellow Springs, the high tree line was filling in lightly, something like the status of the foliage near Columbia in South Carolina during the last week of March. As we drove south toward the Ohio River, the canopy became fuller and fuller as though we were approaching Charleston. All along the roadsides, silver olives were in bloom.
2008: Into South Glen at the Covered Bridge with Jeanie: Large patches of twinleaf foliage, all flowers gone. Fragments of Dutchman’s britches and toothwort. Bluebells blooming but the blue hillsides are being swallowed up by garlic mustard heading up. Red bellied woodpecker in the Glen and at home in the back yard called throughout the morning. Grackles, sparrows, squirrels, red and gold finches, doves, a few cardinals have been feeding in the sun. Tree of heaven has swollen buds. Daffodils declining quickly, tulips still bright. Redbuds opening more now below the fringed box elder blossoms. At the Wegerzyn Gardens in Dayton, tulips, redbuds, dogwoods, crab apples were in full bloom, weigela open, nodding bluebells lining the entry road. Maples were in flower, ginkgo leafing out.
2009: Weeding in the northeast garden, Jeanie came upon an injured luna moth. Then late this afternoon, Jeanie heard bees; she looked up and there was a swarm over in the Lawson’s yard, hanging from a branch high in the hackberry tree. Mock orange bushes have buds now. First garlic mustard is in bloom near the pond.
2010: Small copper butterfly seen as I was mowing the lawn, and a small, round, bright red spider (a velvet mite) in the dirt back by the shed.
2011: Heavy clouds this morning. The first grackle came to the feeder at 5:58. Cowbirds are back again today. Cardinals seen mating in the Osage trees. Rose of Sharon is leafing out.
2012: Viburnum and Korean lilac provide the most color in the north garden now. Honeysuckle flowers brighten the hedgerow around the yard, though, and the circle garden is full of violet wood hyacinths and lamium. Near the bird feeders, the first spiderwort opened last night, and the first sweet rockets bloomed in the Phillips Street alley. Sparrows and grackles and cardinals loud throughout the morning walk. Lots of robins hopping in the lawns. Throughout the Northeast today, heavy snows.
2013: To Beavercreek this morning: Dandelions thick on all the boulevards and in the fields, the peak of the Great Dandelion Bloom. A few apple blossoms opening. White star hyacinths found in bloom in the Phillips Street alley. On High Street, most of the star magnolia petals have fallen. Serviceberry trees hold their flowers while leafing now. All the silver maples still in bloom, forsythia flowers darkening slightly as they age. At Ellis Pond, two-inch leaves on the vernal witch hazel, Norwegian Maple in full flower (with flowers like Lil’s maple), mountain ash with two-to-three-inch leaf clusters. Red maple setting seeds, elderberry bush with one-inch leaf clusters, buckeye leaves almost full size, bald Cyprus with half-inch foliage, silver maple one-inch leaves, pink magnolia and all the weeping cherries in full bloom.
2014: To the Covered Bridge with Jeff: Hillside after hillside of full-blooming bluebells, just like they were when I first saw them with Jeanie decades ago; along the path we found toad trilliums and wild phlox and toothwort; garlic mustard is growing tall, fully budded; clusters of green buds on the buckeyes. Shepherd’s purse found at the end of its cycle, and a soft cress about two feet tall, either Arabis glabra, tower mustard, or Brassica rapa, field mustard/rape, a very soft-leafed plant with alternate, clasping leaves and yellow flowers of four petals.
2015: As I was digging the north east annual bed, I noticed that the first garlic mustard of the year was open. I marked off the goldenrod bed by the trellis, the foliage about three-inches long. I transplanted one peach sapling, a few Asiatic lilies, several stray purple coneflowers – also about three inches, and I completed the evening primrose (oenothera) bed behind the phlox. I uncovered the Joe Pye – two to three inches high -from the tangle of euonymus around it. At the Ellis Pond arboretum, red maple just barely leafing; Cornus florida, a small-flowered dogwood was open; Japanese maples with one-inch leaves, wild plum in dense, full flower, fragrance rich and heavy; small leaf clusters on the Siberian elms; sassafras with pale green, lilac-like buds; first shiny buds on the sweet gum; one-inch leaf on the Katsura and hornbeam; blue ash in flower; columnar ginkgo with half-inch leaves; red horse chestnut and yellow buckeye both with two-inch leaves and flower spikes (not open); cyprus starting, half to a full inch of bristly foliage, a nearby larch about the same.
2016: Spreading fields of dandelions gone to seed at the south edge of town. The Great Violet Bloom continues unabated.
2017: Spain: North through more eucalyptus forest to Quintans, a prosperous small village on the way to Muxia,. A patch of Solomon’s seal found along the path, but the variety of plants was small, included hemlock and maybe a few angelicas, one columbine, one mock orange, patches of white Asiatic dayflowers, wild foxgloves (that I thought of as a relative of snapdragons). Fields of hay not ready to be cut, some land being prepared for eucalyptus planting, and great mountain and valley vistas. Lots of butterflies, whites, sulphurs, a few blues, many gold-browns.
2018: The forecast finally promises an end to the rain and chill. Cold Aprils and warm Aprils show spring is a moveable feast like Easter, subject to place as well as to Sun, dependent upon looking for which full moon happens when and then subtracting or adding days from equinox, timing the ritual without sense or deities, with a loose cluster of vestments and traditions and landmarks like tulips, daffodils, pear flowers, redbuds: clear but fluid expectations cradling memories and moods having little to do, really, with natural history or the weather, always welcome when it comes.
The passage from Middle Spring into Late Spring is imaginary as any calendar date. The constellations of the snow retreat with Orion, sliding so far west they disappear altogether from the night sky, but knowing their precision depends on clouds and caring to look. Venus sinks early with Taurus at dusk tonight, maybe pulling down the winter stars beside her. Warblers and orioles arrive from Aquarius with the Aquarid meteors, but the moveable feasts themselves are always uncertain, always our own.
2019: Jill saw several moths at the porch light this evening. Leslie saw chimney swifts and a yellow-rumped warbler getting spring colors. And “dramatic beauty of redbuds against spring-green leaves/lawns early this week. Still lots of lawns abloom with gorgeous purple violets and spring beauties.”
2020: Flies have hatched around the circle garden today, and carpenter bees explore the porch wood. But mosquitoes rare, no spiders seen. Not a single earthworm found as I dug a sizeable portion of the garden. Two cabbage white butterflies passed through. In the alley, one maple tree is shedding seeds.
Wherever you are is home
And the earth is paradise:
Wherever you set your feet is holy land.
Wilfred Pelletier and Ted Poole