Sunday’s new moon brings Snowdrop Winter deep into the region

The signs enjoy deep power in their special season: Summer comes with Gemini, Autumn with the Virgin, Winter begins with Sagittarius, Spring with Pisces. — Manilius THE FIRST WEEK OF EARLY SPRING The thirteenth week of the natural year

The Lambing and Kidding Moon wanes throughout its final quarter this week, becoming the new Broody Hen Moon at 4:04 p.m. on February 23, reaching apogee, its position farthest from Earth at 6:36 a.m. on February 26.

Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, this moon moves overhead in the middle of the day. Lunar position favors after-lunch fishing this week, especially as the cold fronts of February 24 and 28 approach.

Weather trends

After benign days in February’s third week that sometimes force snowdrops and aconites into bloom, the chilly February 24 front almost always pushes Snowdrop Winter deep into the region. New moon on the 23rd will increase the power of this system, quite likely putting a stern end to the mid-February thaws. Since this weather system often clashes strongly with the moist air of early spring, snowstorms, flooding and tornadoes are more likely to occur now than at any time since the 15th. The 26th, or the day after this high pressure passes through, however, is dry and partly cloudy most of the time, and the 27th is often mild as low-pressure precedes the endof-the-month high.

Countdown to spring

■ Just one week to the season of salamanders mating in the warm rains

■ Two weeks to the beginning of the morning robin chorus before sunrise.

■ Three weeks to daffodil season and silver maple blooming season and the first golden goldfinches.

■ Four weeks to tulip season and the first wave of blooming woodland wildflowers and the first butterflies

■ Five weeks until golden forsythia blooms and skunk cabbage sends out its first leaves and the lawn is long enough to cut

■ Six weeks until American toads sing their mating songs in the dark and corn planting time begins

■ Seven weeks until the peak of Middle Spring wildflowers in the wood and the full bloom of flowering fruit trees

■ Eight weeks until the first rhubarb pie

■ Nine weeks until the first cricket song on Late Spring

■ Ten weeks to the great warbler migration through the Lower Midwest

In the field and garden

Inspect preserved food for spoilage.

Plant sweet peas and the first row of regular green peas directly in the garden, as conditions permit.

Make plans to sell kids and lambs to the Easter Market at the end of March and in early April

Wild multiflora roses sprout their first leaves. Red knuckles of garden rhubarb and May peonies appear after a few days of thawing. Seed cold frames with lettuce, chard, and spinach.

Pastures start to grow as soon as snow cover recedes. Mares show signs of estrus as the days grow longer.

Measure the height of hyacinths, daffodils and tulips.

Note the color and size of lilac and other buds. Count the number of pussy willows emerged. Look for new leaves on garlic mustard and poppies.

Check for chickweed greening in the bushes. Spring does not necessarily arrive with warm weather; it is the accumulation of individual events that finally overwhelm the winter.

Journal

It is early spring, and I collect the pieces of the changes, watching them accumulate and spread. It seems that there are not enough pieces yet to make a full-fledged spring, but I know that they will come if I recall them. And so I build a scaffolding on which to place them when I find them, a skeleton on which to fashion the new season.

All of natural history is in my favor on the 22nd of February. If I compress my Yellow Springs notes from that day, going back to 1983, I can fabricate a quilt of events, webs of color and sound and warming winds to weave into the frame of a twenty-four hour span.

Then, a circadian shape appears, a four-dimensional psychic set, the radius of casual observation cutting across my eighty years, cross-sectioning time (albeit with bias against winter) and I fill in the empty spaces of my imaginary structure of backyard natural history, requiring only this one day to make spring arrive.

I encounter the first fly on this date in 1983, pussy willows half open then.

Rhubarb is up in 1988 to the singing of doves and the heat of 63 degrees.

Bright yellow aconites are in bloom in 1990. Snowdrops are flowering in 1992, and under a high of 70, there are flies in the yard and two daffodils budding and violet lamium blossoming.

This day in 1996, the daffodils are starting to unravel. Slick, red peony stalks are up three inches in 1998, and the soft leaves of the bleeding heart are pushing out

The early morning of 2004 is filled with the sounds of doves, crows, cardinals, sparrows, starlings (singing before seven o’clock), and Henry calls to report a bluebird.

Then I am surrounded by robins along the river in 2006. Casey reports three-dozen buzzards at their roost.

There are honeybees among the new crocuses in 2012, their legs fat and orange with pollen.

On the 22nd in 2014, the first flock of grackles arrives in the backyard, about the same time that John reports sandhill cranes on their way north.

And the robin chorus begins this day in 2017, the earliest I’ve ever heard it.

So all of early spring is right here in one day. And there is nothing false about such a composite.

Its selectivity, ignoring the cold and snowy 22nds, is less self-deception than prophesy. Precedent is the cloak that dresses the bare frame of January. It tells me where and when I was and am and soon will be.

Bill Felker’s collection of essays, “Home is the Prime Meridian: Almanack Essays in Search of Time and Place and Spirit,” is available on Amazon.