April 28th
The 118th Day of the Year
Late Spring:
Wild Phlox,
Sedum, Ginger,
Miterwort, Mustard,
Bellwort, Celandine,
Poppies, Buttercups,
Catchweed, Larkspur,
Peonies, Rue.
Hepatica Sun
Sunrise/set: 5:39/7:26
Day’s Length: 13 hours 47 minutes
Average High/Low: 67/45
Average Temperature: 56
Record High: 85 – 1894
Record Low: 29 – 1934
Weather
The 28th is one of the cloudier days in late April, overcast more than half the time, rain falling 45 percent of the years. The high temperature distribution: five percent chance of 80s, fifty-five percent of 70s, ten percent of 60s, twenty-five percent of 50s, five percent of 40s. Frost: one morning in ten.
Natural Calendar
Garden chives bloom when the first tall grass heads up at the app roach of Late Spring. Black walnut trees leaf out and the green ash trees blossom while the maple flowers collapse all at once. Pussy willow leaves are racing with the box elders, both about half size. Poplar leaves are half an inch, some garlic mustard 12 to 18 inches and in full bloom. Mulberry buds are greening.
The Stars
Before sunrise, Hercules has moved to near the center of the sky. The Summer Triangle, which includes Vega, Altair, and Deneb, is just a little east of Hercules. The Milky Way passes through the Triangle, separating it from autumn’s Pegasus rising on the eastern horizon. The Corona Borealis has shifted into the western half of the heavens, and the pointers of the Big Dipper point almost exactly east-west.
Daybook
1981: First dogwood seen in bloom.
1982: Cascades habitat: Hepatica declining now. Honeysuckle ready to bloom. Early meadow rue opening.
1983: Cascades: Very first garlic mustard blooms, first bellwort. One columbine ready to open. Some Dutchman’s britches and hepatica holding on here. Some miterwort and ragwort open. Three or four blue jays fly around the yard, noisy. Cardinal nesting in the rose bush by the apple tree. Viburnum at Wilberforce with tight green flower clusters.
1984: To Washington, DC: Foliage from Yellow Springs to Hagerstown, Pennsylvania consistent; the Greene County climate holding three hundred miles east through the Appalachians. Coltsfoot full bloom in the mountains. Down toward Washington, everything comes into bloom.
1985: Sweet rocket in bloom. Osage flowers barely open as the last apple blossom fades.
1986: First hummingbird reported by Rebecca Ramsey, a week before the average date for their arrival. Baby blue jays seen just out of the nest. Black walnuts leafing, late maples just starting to leaf. Snowball viburnum starting as the late maples start to leaf. Bridal wreath opens along Short Street. Starlings seen building nest.
1987: First baby robin found, blown from its nest in last night’s storm. Viburnum full bloom, parallel with the late flowering crabs. Full time of winter cress, some pastures completely golden, tree line yellow-green. Pokeweed is emerging now. South Glen: Starling nesting at Sycamore Hole, the big sycamore has small leaves now. Jack-in-the-pulpit is out, wild ginger flowering. Waterleaf is budding. Hepatica done blooming. The undergrowth is ankle high, solid with catchweed, waterleaf. Garlic mustard is up to my thighs in early bloom.
1988: Connie’s letter: “Then on Thursday (the 28th) – a chilly, nasty day – I saw our first set of seven ducklings. There were blossoms on the wild strawberries and everything seemed all right with the world.”
1989: Osage and tree of heaven start to leaf together
1990: Apples late full, petals falling in the wind, cherry too, tulips late, most gone. Lily-of-the valley early bloom. Now the blue speedwell is completely open, the ranunculus came in two days ago, the last hyacinth fading. Sweet rockets budding, garlic mustard early full, strawberries heavy with full bloom, rhubarb more than ready, garlic knee high and strong, knotweed waist high, blue jays building nest in the apple tree. Purple lilacs have all emerged in the last week of 80 degree highs. Honeysuckles budding. Peonies budding, goosefoot sprouting. Hosta six inches, some ferns a foot and a half high. Pines have new growth. Buds on the pyrethrums. Now the whole landscape is greening except for the highest canopy.
1993: Very first garlic mustard seen. Harlan reports that the cherry trees in Washington DC were in full bloom the first week of April. Yellow Springs cherries are full now, one or two apples in bloom, the rest budding. This has been such a cold, Late Spring. Lilacs ready to open in some places. Cabbage butterflies seen mating at Grinnell Pond.
1995: At Grinnell Pond: Middle Spring is through. Only an occasional toothwort remains from that season. Hepatica, Dutchman’s britches, twinleaf, bloodroot gone. Ginger is tall and wide open. The first wild phlox is blooming, and the first bed of wild geraniums. Delicate miterwort stands straight up full bloom from the green rocks. Jack-in-the-pulpit completely developed. Solomon’s seal and plume budded, near full size. The undergrowth rises quickly now, swelling to reach its peak before the canopy closes in May.
1996: To Chicago for Luke’s birthday and high-school graduation party. The landscape appeared stable with little change as we drove north, the roadside grasses bright green, trees in flower. In Chicago, though, the magnolias were in full bloom, whereas they had been almost all down in Yellow Springs. Early and middle daffodils were in full bloom, but in Yellow Springs they were almost gone. Redbuds were full both places. On the return trip, it seemed easier to see the difference in the trees. In Chicago, there was intense movement, buds unraveling, flowering; into Ohio, the flowers were peaking, and the season of leafing was dominant.
1998: The very first sweet rocket of the year flowered this morning at the east end of the south wall garden, the same day as in warm 1985. Across from the Covered Bridge, the ragwort is huge, replacing the brightness of the wilted cowslip. Around the house the forsythia leaves have created a full barrier now, and the honeysuckles have done the same thing along the north and west sides of the yard. The pruned red mulberry trees on the north border are sprouting leaves. Snowball viburnum seen along Elm Street, green-white, early bloom. The year slipping deeper and deeper into Late Spring.
1999: Toad sings off and on all day and night in the rain. Second leaf on the water lily.
2000: First buttercup in the south garden.
2001: First rhubarb pie from the garden patch.
2002: The robin chorus gets underway after a thunderstorm this morning: 4:33 a.m. Cardinal heard at 5:10.
2003: First web by a long-jawed orb weaver spun across the pond last night. I collected the first pink quince petals from the water.
2004: I was digging in the garden, had worked up a sweat and was resting in the shade of the back porch, sipping a glass of iced tea. Sparrows were chirping steadily in the full-blooming honeysuckle bushes nearby. The sky was clear blue, and a light west wind was moving the high trees.
My pulse was up from the garden work, and as I rested, I checked my heartbeat with the second hand of my wristwatch: 75 beats a minute. I rested a little more, looking out over the purple lilacs, and listening to the birds.
The sparrows were so loud, and so steady, and then I realized that they were chirping at about the same rate as my heart was beating.
I checked my watch and I timed their song. Their vocalizations were a metronome matched to the beating of my heart. That evening, I was walking my dog through the neighborhood and I noticed robins chirping their familiar, up-and-down singsong call, and again I timed my rhythm and the birds’ rhythm and found they blended almost perfectly.
Since then, I’ve found the correspondence between my pulse and birdsong to be a little less consistent than I first discovered, but I wonder still about how many other rhythms I may be part of — and there must be so many more — rhythms of which I have no awareness but with which I am doubtlessly in sync, rhythms which not only measure out and pace my life, but which also give it context and even its most fundamental meaning.
2005: A mother cardinal has been nesting in the bamboo along the south wall since about the middle of the month. Red-bellied woodpecker must be nesting nearby, has been calling throughout the month, continues now.
2006: Toad trillium, wild phlox, one buttercup, sweet Cicely, a few trillium grandiflorum and plenty of garlic mustard seen on a walk this morning. The sycamores here are bare, but the ones along Corey Street have small, pale leaves. At home, a few small, red water lily leaves are moving toward the top of the pond.
2007: Two red oaks at the school park have leaves the size of a squirrel’s ear. One oak’s leaves are about an inch long. Black walnut trees and ashes have small leaves, one half to one inch, and tree of heaven branches are sprouting again after having been burned back by frost early in the month.
2008: Rain and sleet today, tomorrow night frost predicted. In the South Glen, summer rising: wood nettle, ironweed stalks.
2009: One cardinal call at 4:23 a.m., the rest of the cardinals, along with a blue jay, steady from 5:13.
2011: Continued rain this morning as tornadoes kill hundreds in the South. On Limestone Street, a few small, pale violet iris in bloom, all the pears have fully developed leaves. Near the Catholic Church, holly is starting to flower. Dogwoods are full everywhere in town. A quieter evening walk, cardinals singing, but no grackles clucking. Peggy’s wild geraniums opened a couple of days ago; Mrs. Timberlake’s are early full in the alley. On the south side of the house, the witch hazel is starting to put out leaves. A few wild strawberry flowers seen. Tree of heaven leaves-branches are a little more than an inch long now, the paulownia trees just a bit behind them, their swelling buds soft, layered, sensuous. The very first red azalea in the east garden bloomed in the rain this afternoon.
2012: Tall alliums are open in the circle garden and at Liz’s on Stafford Street. Her early yellow rose has numerous flowers this morning, and she has one poppy in bloom.
2014: Pear petals coming down in the rain and wind. Deadly tornadoes yesterday and today across the nation’s midsection and the South.
2015: Grackles continue to feed throughout the day – as they have for weeks. The first polygonia butterfly came to the yard, rested on one of the stone garden dividers. Mulberry leaves are half an inch long. The Danielsons’ maple is in full flower. Lil’s and Mrs. Timberlake’s are leafing.
2016: Now the glory-of-the-snow patch is done for the year, but the windflower area is still filled with flowers. Bluebells almost gone. A few ranunculus in bloom along the southeast side of the house, their foliage finally spreading some. Scott told me about noticing Baltimore Orioles gobbling webworms. The webs appear just a little before the Orioles. Perhaps the birds follow the webs all the way up from the South, waiting to eat the hatching worms before they move on. Purple iris in full bloom throughout the village now, bridal wreath early full, the north-side viburnum in full flower, some snowball viburnum whitening.
2017: Finisterre, Spain: A beach habitat with mallow, ginestra, sow thistles, golden swamp iris, buttercups, Angelica (or hemlock), dark purple vetch, yellow daisies, speckled (pink and white) clover, English plantain and what appears to be a variety of black medic clover. Some hydrangeas (similar to Endless Summer variety) are starting to flower. Occasional viburnum/hydrangea bushes in bloom. The walk to the “end of the world” lighthouse was lined with blackberry brambles, white daisies, some nasturtiums, ferns and bushy fennel, yellow sweet clover, a few tall bushy plantains in bloom, a morning glory-related low flower in the sand, elderberry bushes in bloom along the roads and what appears to be a bridal wreath-like shrub. Only a couple of calla lilies noticed in the Finnisterre habitat.
2019: A drive to Delaware, Ohio, an hour or so north of Yellow Springs: Dandelions still covered the waysides, the grasses and trees were glowing until the gray then sunny then gray sky, reminding me of driving south to Jekyll Island, Georgia, in middle March years ago.
2020: First star of Bethlehem and wild strawberry opened in the night. First really warm day in the 70s. Don’s pie cherry tree suddenly losing its petals, while his wild cherry tree is covered with fresh, fragrant blossoms. All the crab apples holding, full. The viburnum on the north side of my house is just starting to open. Rhubarb in the Bill Duncan Park’s gardens only about a foot tall, mostly leaves.
A path comes into existence only when you observe it.
Werner Heisenberg