April showers make way for flowers blooming bleeding hearts

The Snows are thaw’d, now grass new clothes the earth,

And Trees new hair thrust forth.

The Season’s chang’d, and Brooks late swoln with rain,

Their proper bankes contain.

— Sir Richard Fanshawe, from Ode IV, 7 of Horace

The moon and the meteors

The new Cows Switching Their Tails Moon waxes throughout the week, reaching apogee, its position farthest from Earth on April 14 and coming into its second quarter at 1:59 a.m. on April 20. Rising in the late morning to early afternoon and setting after midnight, this moon passes overhead through the afternoon and evening, encouraging creatures to feed more at that time, especially as the cold fronts of April 16 and 21 approach.

The Lyrid meteor shower begins on April 16 and peaks on April 21-22. Expect up to 20 shooting stars per hour in Lyra, almost overhead in the eastern sky after midnight. The Eta Aquarid meteors run from April 19 to May

28, peaking in May. Find them low in the east before dawn while you are still looking for the Lyrids.

Weather trends

The chances of a high above 50 degrees are 85 percent on almost every day during April’s third quarter, and temperatures above 60 come at least half the time.

Beginning on the 16th of the month, a major increase in the average daily amount of sunlight takes place: a rise from early April’s 50/50 chance of sun or clouds up to a brighter 70 percent chance of clear to partly cloudy conditions. High-pressure systems arriving on the 16th and 21st bring increased chances of rain, followed by improved chances of sun. Beginning on the 20th, the chances of an afternoon high in the 70s or 80s jumps from an average of 25 percent to 45 percent.

Zeitgebers (Events in nature that tell the time of year)

Bleeding hearts have hearts. Redbuds are turning a deeper pink and purple. American toads are chanting, and hummingbird moths and bumblebees come out to sip the flowering of dandelions.

This week usually brings full bloom to apple trees, redbuds and dogwoods along the 40th parallel.

Grape vines are leafing out. The juniper webworm emerges, and Eastern tent caterpillars may begin to weave webs on flowering fruit trees.

Grasshoppers are born in the woods and hedgerows. Locusts, mulberries, ash, tree of heaven, and ginkgoes get their foliage. The first daddy longlegs spiders are hunting.

Now the major time of mid-season daffodils and tulips begins across the region. Aphids appear almost everywhere. Pheasants and woodcocks nest along the fencerows.

By this time of the year, honeysuckles and spice bushes have developed enough to turn the undergrowth pale green.

Between now and the first of May, most dandelions go to seed at lower elevations in the central states.

Frogs mate at the same time as cherry trees bloom. When you see magnolia, dogwood and Bradford pears in flower, and daffodils are at their peak, it’s time to put in barley, band seed alfalfa and top-dress winter wheat.

Countdown to spring

One week until azaleas and snowball viburnums and dogwoods blossom

Two weeks until iris and poppies and daisies come into flower

Three weeks until the beginning of clover time in yards and pastures

Four weeks until the first orange day lily flowers

Five weeks until roses bloom and thistles bud

Six weeks until the first strawberry shortcake

Seven weeks until cottonwoods bloom and send their cotton through the air

Eight weeks to the first mulberry pie

Mind and body

The S.A.D. Index, which measures seasonal stress on a scale from 1 to 100, falls slowly through the 30s, reaching a gentle 28 on April 20, its lowest reading so far this year. Only a very few people experience S.A.D. between now and the Dog Days of July – when heat may keep you inside and contribute to a summer cabin fever.

In the field and garden

Pastures fill with blooming cress. Flies bother the cattle. In the Great Lakes region, commercial cabbage transplanting is underway.

Throughout the country’s midsection, black and gray morel mushrooms come up at this time of the month, the same time that orchard grass is ready to harvest. When mosquitoes become troublesome, the morel season is about over.

In your lawn, thymeleafed speedwell flowers at the same time as morels appear.

Pastures turn gold with the major dandelion bloom of the year - a time which coincides with the movement of largemouth bass to shallow water.

Spring coyote attacks on livestock increase as spring deepens. Most predatory activity by coyotes is affected by meteorological factors such as barometric pressure, wind direction, wind speed, temperature, cloud cover and precipitation, as well as by time of day.

Now farmers sow spring grains along the Canadian border, soybeans in Mississippi, and sugar beets in the Midwest.

When the tree line starts to turn green, weevils appear in alfalfa, and the big field corn planting push begins all across the central states.

Journal

Reading Henry David Thoreau’s journals the first time, I wanted him to tell more about himself. I thought all his notes on the thickness of ice at Walden Pond or about the dates the asters bloomed were frivolous. I wanted him to talk, just once, about his most secret passions. I wanted him to stop hiding behind nature.

Then I started keeping my own notebook and found this history of the year was more important to me than the other kinds of history I’d encountered. Starting from an old assumption that the course of the seasons can be a metaphor for the span of human life, I saw that the closer observation of that metaphor revealed parallels I hadn’t thought about before.

Each entry in the notebook, the times of cardinal song, the measurements of leaves, the dates of blossom and petal fall, not only contributed to a grand design, but gave me insights into all the minor, isolated actions, which I used to feel were meaningless in the cycle of my life.

The more closely I looked at what was happening around me, the more detailed and myopic the notes became, the more I understood the extent of the metaphor, and the better I started to understand myself, my own passions, and Thoreau’s.

“Poor Will’s Almanack for 2021” (with the S.A.D. Index) is still available! For your autographed copy, send $20.00 (includes shipping and handling) to Poor Will, P.O. Box 431, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387.