Daylight saving time begins at 2 a.m. Sunday

In our hearts those of us who know anything worth knowing know that in March a new year begins, and if we plan any new leaves it will be when the rest of Nature is planning them too.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

THE THIRD WEEK OF EARLY SPRING Astronomical data and lore

The Broody Hen Moon becomes full on March 9 at 12:48 a.m. reaching perigee, its position closest to Earth, the next day at 1:34 a.m. Full moon and perigee together (combining to create a Supermoon) exert significant force on weather, tides and emotions.

Rising in the evening and setting in the morning, this moon travels overhead, its most powerful location for fishing, in the middle of the night.

Fishing should be especially successful as the barometer drops in advance of the March 5 and 9 cold fronts. After the 10th, he waning moon favors planting of root crops and shrubs. Why not put in some peas, too!

Venus remains the evening star in Aries throughout the month. Jupiter, Saturn and Mars rise together well before dawn in Sagittarius.

On March 8, Daylight Saving Time begins at 2:00 a.m. Set clocks ahead one hour.

Weather trends

The day before the March 5 front arrives is typically the wettest day of the month, with rain or snow likely 70 percent of all the years.

Across the South and Border States, this high can be accompanied by tornadoes.

Once the March 5 front moves through, expect steady winds and brisk temperatures followed by sun.

March’s next major high-pressure system, due on March 9 signals an increased likelihood of storms almost everywhere in the country, and this weather system is accompanied by floods and tornadoes more often than any other front during the first three weeks of the month.

Strongly affected by the Supermoon, the 9th, 10th and 11th are likely to bring some of the chilliest temperatures of the first half of March.

Countdown to spring

■ The morning robin chorus should begin before sunrise this week. Pussy willows are often completely open by today, a traditional signal for the end of maple syrup time.

■ Two weeks to daffodil season, until silver maple blooming season and until the first golden goldfinches.

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

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

■ Five weeks until American toads sing their mating songs in the evenings and corn planting time begins. Watch for morel mushrooms to swell in the dark.

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

■ Seven weeks until the first rhubarb pie

■ Eight weeks until the first cricket song of Late Spring

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

■ Ten weeks until the first roses and orange ditch lilies open and until tender vegetables and flowers can be set out in the garden.

In the field and garden

Complete the spraying of fruit trees after full moon. Spray with dormant oil when the temperature is expected to stay above 40 for 24 hours. Do late pruning on colder afternoons.

Also after full moon, take care of the animals: trim hooves, worm, and treat for external parasites.

Treat your dog and cat for fleas and ticks.

Uncover and fertilize strawberries. Also spread fertilizer on all your garden spaces. This is a good time to seed and fertilize the lawn.

Cut off tips of young black raspberry branches, and remove old canes. Weed the raspberry and blackberry beds.

Start seeds of hardy vegetables like cabbages, kale, collards, onions and radishes in flats or outside as conditions permit. In milder years, lettuce and spinach seeded now will be producing salads in April.

Journal: Chastity

Once the leaves are down in the fall, I avoid looking at winter.

I am always looking for spring and for the moment at which all the best of the year still lies ahead.

Sometimes I think anticipation is better than fulfillment. Promises are better than what is promised. Hope is better than what is hoped for. When dreams come true, they are over. Happily ever after is often better as a wish.

The fantasy of snowdrops can last indefinitely.

The tangible snowdrops not so much. It’s not that I hold back when the buds actually open; it’s just that I feel their deepest truth in the remnants of my longing.

In the middle of February, I walked the wetlands.

They were still quiet then, but that stillness was not barren. The emptiness was clean and pure.

It was making the space without which there would have been no whistles and warbles of the red-winged blackbirds that arrived just a week ago.

In the days before silence ends, waiting was briefly more powerful than the past and the future.

Only possibility was chaste. Something in the body, like something in the land itself, sensed the uncorrupted core of creation from which everything else blossomed.

It understood the formless and wordless kernel of what was to be. It felt that such marrow was somehow more than being because it contained not only its beginning and its ending but also its meaning.

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.