May 9th
The 129th Day of the Year
Then came faire May, the fairest mayde on ground;
Deckt all with dainties of her season’s pryde;
And throwing flowers out of her lap around;
Edmund Spenser
Sunrise/set: 5:26/7:37
Day’s Length: 14 hours 11 minutes
Average High/Low: 70/49
Average Temperature: 59
Record High: 92 – 1896
Record Low: 27 – 1947
Weather
Chances of highs in the 80s are 20 percent today, and 70s come a full 55 percent of the time. The remaining 25 percent of highs are fairly evenly divided between 60s, 50s, and 40s. Today is the second-last day in May when a high of just 40 degrees has a ten percent chance of occurring. The final day for such odds this spring is May 25. Skies are at least partially blue 80 percent of the time today, but a shower occurs three years in a decade. Chances of frost remain at early May’s ten to 15 percent.
The Natural Calendar
Except in years of heavy April and early May rains, the field corn has just come up, warmed by normal high temperatures in the 70s (for the first time since early autumn), and relatively gentle lows in the upper 40s. All the tobacco beds have sprouted below the Ohio River, and tobacco transplanting has begun. Orchard grass is heading. A little alfalfa is budding. Red and white clovers blossom in the pasture.
It is the center of pepper, cantaloupe, and cucumber planting, the quarter mark for soybean seeding. Migrant workers move north to help with setting plants. In the wood lots, Eastern tent caterpillars defoliate the cherry trees. Spittlebugs appear on pine trees, azalea mites on azaleas, cankerworms on elms and maples, lace bugs on the mountain ash.
Daybook
1984: Cherry blossoms mostly gone.
1985: Cascades: I found long tadpoles basking in the sunny water. Parsnips were just starting to bloom. Shooting star past its prime. Full columbine, golden alexander, Solomon’s plume. Jack-in-the-pulpit was turning red. Thin-leafed waterleaf just beginning. Sweet Cicely budding.
1986: Water lilies and yellow swamp iris bloom up at Crystal Lake, says Connie. Peonies seen in Dayton.
1988: Today was the first day for sweet rockets.
1990: Wild cherries full bloom. Some corn sprouted, three to four inches high, but rare. Black walnut trees green. Osage and hackberry just opening. Mock orange budding. Only a few red quince hold on. The high canopy is pale green now, oaks leafing, too. First day for comfrey flowers. Star of Bethlehem still full (gone by May 22). Speedwell declines. Greenhouse filled with the rich scent of the mother-in-law’s tongue.
1991: Spiderwort opened today. Poppy and iris full bloom all over town.
1992: First sweet rocket opens in the yard.
1993: First sweet Cicely barely opening behind the pink quince in full bloom. First fall-red raspberry flowers. Horseradish budding. Bridal wreath full bloom along Xenia Avenue. Privet buds pace the honeysuckle buds.
1995: In the south garden, the wood hyacinths are coming in now, the whites following the violets. The first sweet rocket opened this afternoon. In the east garden, astilbe has formed flower heads, and the first wild geranium is open. Poison ivy and Virginia creeper leaves are developed to a fourth of their summer size.
Rose of Sharon has finally begun to leaf. At school, my ash tree has started to get leaves. The foliage of the ginkgoes and sugar gums parallel each other’s growth at maybe a fourth of full size. This morning in the heavy rain, all the gum flower clusters fell to the street. At South Glen, it’s the absolute peak of garlic mustard, and along Grinnell, the pink honeysuckle is in full bloom, probably started a week ago. All the other honeysuckles are still closed.
1998: Chives opened up today. Rhododendrons have new shoots beside their flowers. Foxglove heading up. Two purple clematis on the east fence. The first daisy and pyrethrum half open.
1999: Daisies are blooming in town, and the first in the south garden here.
2000: Pale violet iris opens in the south garden, maybe a week behind the more precocious plants in town. First chive flower opens all the way. Four clematis flowers on the east fence. This year is ahead of 1999 by one pyrethrum and about four daisies. Then down the path toward Springfield, the afternoon windy and temperatures in the 80s: I passed wisteria early bloom, honeysuckles full, rockets everywhere, cressleaf groundsel here and there, sweet Cicely, golden Alexander, wild phlox and geranium, late garlic mustard, late winter cress, late and lanky tangled catchweed, pokeweed up to three feet, hemlock to seven, huge fat mullein, wild lettuce. Burdock foliage the size of the well-developed rhubarb in the north garden. Grasses pace the height of the garlic mustard now, past three feet and dense. Nettle chest high. Early wild dark purple spiderwort in patches, first yellow wood sorrel, first wild raspberries flower, one pink trillium grandiflorum, one May apple in bloom. Elms and maples full leafed, oaks maybe half size, wild cherry blossoming, the canopy overhead sometimes a fourth filled, sometimes three-fourths to complete.
2001: First rhododendrons blossom along the south fence. First mock orange blooms. Korean lilac and spreading dogwood full bloom. The canopy is closing quickly. Fox seen between Chillicothe and Washington Court House.
2002: Locusts opening in Dayton. Beech tree red with new leaves. First purple rhododendrons bloom in the south garden.
2005: First cardinal at 4:45 a.m., first dove at 4:53, green frog at 4:55. Here and there along the way to Washington Court House, neglected fields are yellow with winter cress. The corn and soybean fields are smooth and rich brown, disked and seeded.
2006: First skipper, black swallowtail and yellow swallowtail seen today.
2007: Mock orange beginning to open, honeysuckle completely full, hawthorn with buds ready, more iris in bloom in town. I saw a red admiral butterfly, the first of the year, as I was transplanting cosmos in the south garden. The first tropical storm of the year – three weeks early, is moving toward north Florida and the Carolinas.
2008: The late tulips disintegrate in the rain as the lilacs rust. The last of Don’s pink magnolia petals are falling. I transplanted a handful of basil into the vegetable garden today. A field on the south side of town has been taken over by winter cress. Donna and Al Denman sent a message from Birch Creek: “We saw a mother wood duck with six ducklings today.”
2009: Home to Yellow Springs from Maumee Bay State Park: Here, the viburnums, the catmint and the hyacinths are in full bloom now, and many allium and chives. Full Korean lilac and honeysuckle, fragrance filling the back yard. Full hawthorn in the park, full silver olives along the roads. Standard lilacs are done, bleeding hearts late. First mock orange, spiderworts, sweet Williams and first standard iris. Poppies on Elm street are out. Weigela is opening, Jerusalem artichokes are knee high. Red and pink quince completely gone.
2010: Privets budding, hawthorn in the park rusting quickly. Weigela remains in full bloom. The north viburnum has shed half its petals, and bridal wreath is just about gone throughout the neighborhood. Daisies are full, gathering momentum. Snow-on-the-mountain starting to flower.
2011: When I got up today, I found an adolescent camel cricket in the bathtub. I put him outside warning him to stay away from spiders and the cats. The red-bellied woodpecker is the most obvious songster this morning, and for the past week, as well. From Madison, Wisconsin, Tat says her daffodils are still holding in the cold and just one of her tulips is starting to open. First pure white moth by the porch light. Along Elm Street, the poppies are coming in, and all of the maples in town are well-leafed out. Azaleas and buckeyes and silver olive shrubs are in full bloom. Along Xenia Avenue, the sycamores have started, just a little ahead of the witch hazel by our south bedroom window. A toad sang in the pond all afternoon, and another yellow swallowtail came by while I was mowing the lawn. Zinnias planted in the evening.
2013: I got up about 3:30 in the morning. It had rained the previous evening. My window was open, and the air was cool and damp. I felt the anxiety and fear that sometimes greet me when I wake. I was still tired and wanted to stay in bed, but remnants of my dreams kept me from going back to sleep and finally pulled me up.
I listened for birds at my window as I got dressed. Not a sound, not even a car passing on Dayton Street. And then I went outside with Bella, my border collie, to walk in the dark. The moonless predawn sky was completely clear, and I could see the constellations of an August evening, the Northern Cross, Aquila, Lyra, above me.
I started south along High Street, at 3:50. I heard birds by the time I reached the streetlight at Limestone at 3:53: At first just sporadic chirping of robins, then their rhythmic singsong. When I turned down dark Stafford Street, I lost them altogether, had to go back the way I came to pick up the strand of chant. `
At 4:32, I heard the sharp vocalization of the first cardinal, then no other cardinals until they consistently joined the robins at 4:50. Song sparrows came in at 4:53, crows in the distance at 4:57, doves at , sunrise less than half an hour away.
And the sky grew lighter, and the sound increased around me. On the empty streets, down Davis and Phillips, robins, bold with lust, chased each other in the twilight down the sidewalks and the empty streets, seeming to me like startled crabs racing across the hard sand of the receding ocean tide.
By 5:10 I realized that the cardinals and sparrows and doves were so loud I could no longer hear the robins. And I was aware then that the worst of the night’s phantoms had been sung away. The sinking feeling in my chest lightened, and my breathing deepened, my concerns washed in rhythms of the chorus.
House sparrows began their steady rhythmic chirp at 6:02. I came back to my house at 6:15, sat on the back porch and waited for the grackles: they joined the great symphony at 6:20. Then I waited as the sun came up between Lil’s house and Jerry and Lee’s house, until the red-bellied woodpecker called out at 7:00.
I watched all the color enter the trees and the flowers, revealing the violet of the hyacinths and the wisteria and lilacs, and then even the phantoms that had resisted the birds receded with daylight, the sun reaching the tops of the white mulberry leafing out and the box elder with its foliage complete.
In the afternoon, Bella and I stopped at the Upper Grinnell habitat and walked along its exotic paths lined with huge honeysuckle bushes. At the old quarry pool, a spread of cattails which were all about three feet high, large patches of ragwort in bloom, the part of the wetland area close to the path densely covered with touch-me-nots about six inches high. Down the steep way to the river: tall and common ragwort, sweet Cicely, phlox, geraniums, a pool with full-blooming watercress, giant white May apple flowers. Such a luminous glow to the woods, and all around the song of the brooks that ran beside and across the path.
2014: Sweet Cicely budded, petal fall accelerating – our red crab turning pale, the canopy developing quickly now. John Blakelock reports, disheartened, that his toads had not mated this year and that his robins were only about a tenth of what they had been. Bridal wreath full now along High Street. Paulownia has one-inch shoots, tree-of-heaven with bushy, new, short branches. The high tree line filling quickly, like Jekyll Island in late March. Poppies in the alley are still not open, but their bud stems are lanky, flower heads bobbing. The pink quince near the pond is shedding at the same rate as the red crab apple tree in the front garden.
2015: The circle garden is at its peak: full allium and blue wood hyacinths and the last blossoms of the Indian hyacinths. The new rhododendrons are cracking just a little. The great white viburnum is blanketed with white flowers, and the Paulonia has well developed leaves maybe a third of full size. A spicebush swallowtail zoomed in and then out of the yard up through the white mulberry tree. I transplanted a hobblebush along the north border, planted amaranth in the south alcove by the back porch. The amaranth I planted in the north garden has sprouted but is too small to thin and transplant.
2016: Jill’s clematis started to bloom today, and bittersweet nightshade noticed in bloom winding through the honeysuckle hedge – as it has for as far back as I can remember. And a note from Jenny Cowperthwaite: “Since I last emailed (May 8th) we have seen 4 female RB Grosbeaks and I tried to get a photo of 7, yes, SEVEN males on our feeder plus 3 females all at the same time, but they are so wary it’s hard to get close enough, even with a zoom, to get a decent photo. It’s certainly been a magical year for us at he feeders, unlike any prior year and we’ve lived here for 11 years now. What delights us now through to October are the ruby throated hummingbirds, though the population seems to have dropped significantly in the last 4-5 years. It used to be we went though a quart of nectar per day, and at best count had 17 hummers but I think there we more. Last year we felt the number was more like 7 to 10 at most. “
2017: The viburnum on the north side of the house lost its final petals today, and the bright pink azalea is dropping petals all at once.
2018: Things are happening so quickly, and I can’t keep up. Oak leaves, maple leaves, honeysuckle leaves, box elder leaves surging and filling in all the spaces left by March and April. Oakleaf hydrangea leaves reaching up like soft, pale hands. Pokeweed is six inches, milkweed almost a foot, hackberry buds just greening, trumpet creeper leaves an inch. More hollyhocks planted in the north garden, more dahlias in the north porch garden. As Jill and I walked the bike path, we saw May apple flower buds. And an American toad called out to us.
2019: This morning, I was surprised to see that yesterday evening’s drive from Yellow Springs to Keuka Lake resulted in a windshield speckled with insects, the first time in several years that I have encountered so many insects at night.
2020: This morning, Shep said that four customers at his hardware store had seen Baltimore orioles this past week, and that two more had seen hummingbirds. Along High Street, bridal wreath spirea is open, and I saw sweet Cicely blooming down Stafford Street.
We looked far across the valley, to the green fields and the green of woodlands and the shadow of valleys, The air vibrated with birdsong, which is the great rhythm made palpable to the ear. All the senses tingled, alive with the season as the world itself is alive. Nothing was impossible. High achievement was all around us, beating on every one of our senses for recognition.
Hal Borland