Plant the first sweet corn as conditions permit

There is no foliage on the trees yet; only here and there the red bloom of the soft maple, illuminated by the declining sun, shows vividly against the tender green of a slope beyond, or a willow, like a thin veil, stands out against a leafless wood.

— John Burroughs

THE FIFTH WEEK OF EARLY SPRING Astronomical data and lore

The Broody Hen Moon wanes throughout the period, becoming the new Hungry Moon at 4:29 a.m. on March 24, reaching apogee (its weak position farthest from Earth) the same day.

The name “Hungry Moon” refers to situations caused by poor early spring pastures that may not provide enough nourishment for grazing livestock.

Rising well before dawn and setting in the afternoon, this moon will travel overhead through the middle of the morning. That being the case, fish should have brunch about the same time as you do, especially when the cold fronts of March 24 and 29 approach

Just before dawn, the stars of Capricorn lie in the southeast. Sagittarius and Scorpius (easily identified by the red star, Antares, in its center) fill the south. West of Scorpius is the boxy Libra. West of Libra is Virgo, marked by Spica, the brightest of the southwestern stars. Venus will be at its greatest elongation on March 24 – for best viewing high in the dark early morning sky.

Weather trends

The March 24 cold front, like the March 14 system, is often mild, and it is followed by some of the driest and brightest days so far in the year. In the low-pressure trough that precedes the March 29 cold front, the 28th is typically one of the warmest days in March, with highs above 60 degrees occurring five days in ten at the 40th Parallel and below.

Countdown to spring

■ One week until Canadian geese are nesting and laying their eggs, until tulip season and the first wave of blooming woodland wildflowers and the first butterflies. And raspberry leaves are ready for tea.

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

■ Three 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.

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

■ Five weeks until the first rhubarb pie

■ Six weeks until the first cricket song of Late Spring

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

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

■ Nine weeks until the high canopy begins shades the garden

■ Ten weeks until mulberries are sweet and cottonwood cotton drifts in the wind

In the field and garden

Lettuce and other hardy sprouts can be moved to the cold frame even in the coldest years.

Horseradish, dock and dandelion root are ready for digging. Plant the first sweet corn as conditions permit.

All farm tools and implements, seeds, herbicides, fertilizers and pesticidesshould be on line.

Termites swarm in the third to fourth week of March, depending on the character of early spring. Don’t mistake them for flying ants.

The Hungry Moon often shines on poor pastures. Offer plenty of supplements to get your animals to the more benign conditions of April’s Cows Switching Their Tails Moon.

Journal: The normal condition of the earth

Instinctively summer is accepted as the normal condition of the earth, winter as the abnormal. Summer is ‘the way it should be.’ It is as though our minds subconsciously returned to some tropical beginning, some summerfilled Garden of Eden. — Edwin Way Teale

I thought of these lines by Edwin Way Teale as I drove back to Ohio from a brief trip to the Florida Keys this past month.

The weather had been sunny and mild, the roadside grasses green and fresh, all the way up through Charlotte, but the first clouds appeared with the high piedmont of southern Virginia , and soon the sky was overcast and the grass was brown, and I climbed out of the remnants of spring past patches of snow toward Beckley into flurries and winter.

It wasn’t that the change was disheartening or surprising. I had made that trip dozens of times through the years, and I knew what to expect in almost any month. But once again I was reminded of Teal’s assertion, the idea that winter is abnormal, that there is something wrong with the cold, something the way it shouldn’t be.

The Spartan alternative view is to man or woman up to the challenges, to exult in the beauty of the snow or spread cheer by the cozy fireside bright and then cuddle down under warm covers.

But the increasingly hot summers are not necessarily so desirable, either. Most people hide from August’s sun in shade or in air conditioned cars, offices and homes. Apparently temperatures above 90 and high humidity are not the way the world should be.

The subconscious mind indeed not only wants Eden, but it also wants to eat the serpent’s apple, learn all about good and evil and not get driven out into the cold. It wants to swim in the warm ocean, lie out on the beach without getting sunburned, love and be loved, be free from pain and fear.

Of course. That’s the way it should 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. Or, for your autographed copy, send $17.00 to Poor Will, P.O. Box 431, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387