May 11th
The 131st Day of the Year
And May has come, hair-bound in flowers,
With eyes that smile thro’ the tears of the hours,
with joy for to-day and hope for to-morrow
And the promise of Summer within her breast!
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sunrise/set: 5:24/7:39
Day’s Length: 14 hours 15 minutes
Average High/Low: 71/49
Average Temperature: 60
Record High: 94 – 1896
Record Low: 33 – 1945
Weather
Today marks a another pivotal time in the progress of spring: Beginning May 11, the danger of frost at average elevations along the 40th Parallel diminishes sharply to less than ten percent per morning through June 7, when it becomes less than five percent. Highs rise above 80 degrees 50 percent of all the afternoons on this date, making it the day with the best chance of warm weather in the entire month of May. Twenty-five percent of the days heat up to the 70s, twenty more to the 60s, and only one day in a blue moon remains in the cold 50s or 40s. The sun comes out for at least a little while on 70 percent of all May 11ths; showers are relatively rare, occurring just 20 percent of the time, the driest of any May day in my history.
Natural Calendar
Scorpion flies appear in the garden. Bullfrogs call in the swamps. Minnows and chubs in the creeks have turned a reddish-gold for their mating season. Flea time has begun for pets, and spitbugs grow in the shelter of parsnips, announcing that the first cut of hay will soon be underway all across the Lower Midwest in average years. The offspring of monarch butterflies that left Texas in February cross the Ohio River. White cabbage butterflies and yellow sulphurs play and spiral above the rhubarb. Crappie fishing peaks in the shallows as the sun nears three-fourths of the way to summer solstice.
Daybook
1983: First purple iris seen on Xenia Avenue. Blue jays very restless. At Clifton Gorge, bluettes, ragwort, phlox, May apples, columbine, spring beauties, Jack-in-the-pulpit, sedum, water cress, white, yellow, blue violets, bedstraw, hairy waterleaf, sweet Cecily, golden alexander, swamp buttercup, Solomon’s plume, henbit, wild strawberry, wild geranium, miterwort, nodding trillium full bloom. Trillium grandiflorum are pink and way past their prime, toad trillium and early meadow rue completely done, only one or two bluebells left. Thrush sings in the honeysuckle, leading me along the path.
1984: Jeni reports baby birds are out in Florida. Here at the Indian Mound: new pine cone growth noticed. Hemlock knee high, nettle waist high. Bright green beetle flies away from me. Dogwood and redbud still open. Thrush, catbird, wren, bluebird, scarlet tanager seen. Wild cucumber growing by the river, maple-like leaf on long tendril. First waterleaf comes in.
1986: Jacoby Meadow: Goat’s beard early along Jacoby road. Buckeyes done blooming. Leafcup knee high, catchweed clumps waist high in the swamp. Canopy about a third complete. Fields of yellow buttercups. Heavy sweet scent to the air. Cowslips, geraniums still open. Next year’s garlic mustard thick everywhere, grass wet and tall, reaching almost to my waist. Watercress lanky and toppling over, still full bloom. Lizard’s tail leafing. Elms flowering, their leaves half an inch long. Mosquitoes biting. First daddy longlegs. It seems a totally different time of year, from only days ago.
1987: First plantain and meadow goat’s beard seen in bloom.
1988: First meadow goat’s beard. Cattail foliage waist high. Suckers mating below the Covered Bridge. Small school of sunfish a few hundred yards downstream, several carp in the main channel, migration full swing. Poison ivy leaves fresh, about half size, they pace the Virginia creeper. Purple deadnettle decaying, yellow. Comfrey waist high and budding. Bluebells done in the yard.
1989: First young doves seen out of their nest. At the Mill, wild hyacinth found full bloom, probably opened in April, its violet color adding to the deep purple of larkspur and the phlox and violets and geranium. Poison ivy a little ahead of Virginia creeper. Robin’s fleabane open. First waterleaf. First parsnips. First crickets heard, the Northern Spring Field Cricket, the only chirping spring cricket in this region. First grasshoppers, hundreds of them clatter in the dry leaves. First sweet rocket. First clustered snakeroot buds. Sweet Cicely early full bloom. Mint and some zigzag goldenrod close to knee high.
1991: First standard iris in the yard. Blue flag iris have large buds. South garden in full flower: buttercups, poppies, sweet rocket, daisies, pyrethrums. First green-bottle fly seen. First orange skipperling in the iris.
1993: Only ranunculus and wood hyacinths in the south garden so far. Young squirrel and young groundhog killed on Grinnell Road this morning. Apple blossoms and redbuds suddenly gone in the 80-degree temperatures. First pyrethrum starts to unravel. Sycamores half leafed. Lupine buds in the garden pace the iris. First white clover seen at Wilberforce. John calls from New York Mills in Minnesota, says that they are a week behind Minneapolis, when usually they are two, and that peonies are ten inches tall, that tulips are open, lilacs and apples are budding, mosquitoes pesky, some dandelions open.
1995: First columbine opens this morning in the east garden as the azaleas are at their most beautiful. In the triangle park, yesterday’s storms brought down all the apple petals. Along Dayton Street, periwinkles still in bloom; witch hazel leaves are half size. On Elm Street, an entire bed of orange poppies has come into bloom. Around the yard, ferns, lilies, comfrey, summer phlox all at about the same height, just below my waist. In New York Mills, John says that the trees are just barely budding, and the only sign of life in the ground is the emerging rhubarb.
1997: Azaleas full bloom in the east garden, along with the wild geraniums and the first small dark iris (bloomed two days ago), columbine budding beside them. Now the bleeding hearts, frozen down three weeks ago, are starting to come back with their hearts. Dead nettle is at its best. All the daffodils except the small ones have been dead-headed. The first fleabane has been open for a day or two. Sweet Cicely is budding. Rose of Sharon has finally started to leaf a little. Red quince fading in town. Apple petals falling heavily on Xenia Avenue. Daisies look ready to unravel this coming week. Pyrethrums are heading up. Ranunculus has opened. Pink honeysuckles full bloom along Grinnell, but home honeysuckles just budding.
1998: Meadow goat’s beard all over the side of the road today. Middle of Late Spring now. Sycamores at least a fourth leafed, and Osage and black walnut, the last holdouts are filling quickly.
1999: First June bug.
2000: Wood hyacinths end a little after the creeping phlox, as the first bachelor’s buttons come in. Small damsel fly, blue-tailed, at the pond today. Comfrey has opened up in the north garden, probably came in days ago.
2001: Into South Glen: second scorpion fly and second white-spotted skipper of the year seen (the first ones seen two days ago). First meadow goat’s beard. Violet waterleaf flowers standing straight up like wild geraniums.
2002: First strawberry reddens. Scorpion flies seen. Silver olive and honeysuckle shrubs full bloom, pacing the poppies and peonies.
2005: Sweet rockets suddenly in bloom along Grinnell Road. Bridal wreath spirea is lush in Cedarville. One pollen spike has appeared on the wild iris rushes in the pond. Brown maple seeds are prominent in the trees, beginning to fall. Catmint budded at home, blooming downtown.
2006: The lilacs in the alley disintegrated overnight. Honeysuckles are in lush full bloom, some petals even falling in the rain. I either missed my sequencing when I wrote my April weekly overviews several years ago, or spring is advancing much more quickly than usual this year. Certainly, honeysuckle, viburnum and bridal-wreath spirea seasons follow directly after apple petal fall and the end of the redbuds. Kousa dogwoods follow on the heels of the standard dogwoods. First blue robin eggshell found on the sidewalk this evening in the park.
2007: The first sweet William opened in the night. Folded-winged butterflies noticed this morning speeding back and forth along the west border of the yard.
2008: A cold and rainy day in the 50s, the one day in a blue moon mentioned in my weather history for today. The pale spiderwort in the north garden does not care: two powder-blue blossoms this morning. At the park, hawthorn trees are fully budded with some blossoms spreading out. Wild cherry trees are open along Dayton Street, clustered snakeroot heading in the circle garden. The perennial salvia at the northwest corner of the yard has started to bloom. Peggy’s iris, red purple, are opening. Jeni’s pink dogwood is blooming in Portland, Oregon.
2010: First scorpion fly seen in the garden. Peaches about an inch long. First major thinning of the lettuce for lunch. First sprouts seen on two of the raspberry bushes set in during the first week of April. Toad seen when I was working on the new storage shed in the evening.
2011: Rome to Spoleto, Italy: Hillsides bright with yellow ginestra shrubs in bloom, many elderberries in full flower. Lilacs all rusted. Very late bloom of locusts near Rome, coming out more as we drove north. Red-orange poppies throughout. The land seemed dry.
2012: Cricket chirping outside the artisans’ store at 6:15 this evening. Rick says his tadpoles are getting legs. Poppies in decline throughout the village, salvia and blue flags, spiderwort, sweet rocket, catmint full bloom (although the first sweet rockets faded over night). Jeanie cut back all the wood hyacinths this afternoon.
2013: On the way to Cincinnati, I discovered locust trees in bloom about halfway down, thirty miles south of Yellow Springs, the first I’ve seen this year. In the woods at the St. Clare Monastery, the only wildflowers were the full blooming May apples. All the lilacs there were rusted (ours at home definitely declining). A red-bellied woodpecker and cardinals called, and two other birds I couldn’t recognize. Back home at Ellis Pond and the Kennedy Arboretum: Ashes half-leafed; sycamore greening, leaves about a couple inches long; bald cypress foliage spreading out now at about an inch; redbuds gone and dogwood fading; hemlock and dock heading up, having grown to three and four feet; the linden foliage is dense, maybe two-thirds of its mature size; full blooming lilac and garlic mustard and winter cress; the pawpaw has three leaves by each flower bud now; the pecan is flowering and has half-inch leaves; the buckeye and red horse chestnut are in full bloom; bur oak leaves are two to three inches; the sweetheart chestnut and the American chestnut that I thought would be very late have two-inch leaves; hornbeam seems fully leafed, as do the maples and the willows.
2014: First scorpion fly seen in the garden. First sweet rocket opening in the yard. Dogwoods still hold around town, but redbuds are definitely leafing now. Knotweed eight feet tall and bittersweet blooming in the alley. Spruce tip growth very prominent at Don’s.
2015: Viburnum, about five-feet tall, planted along the south east bushes of the property, to fill a break in the foliage barrier there.
2016: One red admiral seen this afternoon. A short walk at dusk in John Bryan Park with Jill: tall and short ragworts, one Solomon’s plume, many full-blooming May apples, wild phlox still open, one golden Alexander, a few tall angelicas, some poison hemlock stalks six feet high.
2019: Keuka Lake to Yellow Springs in the rain: the fields and hills glowing against the gray clouds. As we left, I noticed that the forsythia is quickly losing its flowers here in New York, and the flowers gradually disappeared altogether as we drove south. At home, Mateo’s weigela had opened (ours, dying back, with only a few blossoms). They honeysuckles were in bloom, the wisteria putting out its dusky green foliage, the snowball viburnum near Jeanie’s window gloriously full and filling the vista of the entire yard. On the living room wall, the first daddy longlegs of the spring. In the bathtub, a large brown hunting spider (possibly a Tigrosa helluo).
Think, bright Florella, when you see
The constant Changes of the Year,
That nothing is from Ruin free,
And gayest Things must disappear.
Think of your Beauties in their bloom,
The Spring of sprightly Youth improve;
For cruel Age, alas, will come,
And then ‘twill be too late to love.
Poor Richard’s Almanack