April 12-18, 2010
The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a traveling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
-Algernon Charles Swinburne
Lunar phase and lore

The Golden Goldfinch Moon wanes until it becomes the new Rhubarb Pie Moon at 8:29 p.m. April 14. This new moon will be outstanding for field, garden and landscape planting all week.
Although frost is still possible for another month, it is also possible that there will be no serious freeze between now and summer. Put sweet corn directly in the ground for sure. Try several hills of squash and your first rows of beans.

Bring your lunch to the water and fish from late morning to mid-afternoon under the dark moon. Conditions should be especially favorable for angling before the arrival of cold fronts on the April 16 and 21.

You might try to schedule your biggest meal of the day at noon this week. That way you’ll be outwitting the moon, which will be overhead telling you to eat at that time. If you have a small lunch, you’ll pay with cookies and pie later.

The shooting stars of April are the Lyrids. Find them near the Summer Triangle after midnight between April 17-26.

Weather patterns

Cold 20s are rare (just a 5 percent chance on April 17-18), but light frost still strikes an average of one night in four. Beginning April 20, the chances for an afternoon high in the 70s or 80s jumps from an average of 25 percent way up to 45 percent.

Rain or snow falls an average of 35 percent of the time this week of the year. Beginning on April 16, however, a major increase in the average daily amount of sunlight takes place: a rise from early April’s 50/50 chance for sun or clouds up to a brighter 70 percent chance, for clear to partly cloudy conditions.

The stars continue to point to May: This week of the year, the Big Dipper comes as far as possible into the southern sky, and its pointers (the two outside stars of its dipper cup) are positioned almost exactly north-south after dark. Now Cepheus and Cassiopeia, which were nearly overhead in early winter, have moved to the far side of Polaris along the northern horizon.

April 21 is Cross-Quarter Day, the day on which the sun’s position reaches its halfway point to summer solstice. And Cross-Quarter Day is only five days away from late spring.

Almanac daybook

April 12: If you have beehives, check to make sure bees are carrying in pollen. Bees need pollen to raise larvae, and without it, they will not raise enough bees to gather the summer honey crop. If they are not bringing in enough pollen, feed a pollen substitute.
April 13: Throughout the northern half of the country, forsythia, crabapples, dandelions, fruit trees, wild mustards, honeysuckles, Russian olives, redbuds, magnolias, ground ivy and poppies are blooming.

But flowers don’t always mean bees find pollen. Frost, wind, rain, snow and overcast days can all cause the bees not to be able to fly or the plants not to produce pollen or nectar.

April 14: The Rhubarb Pie Moon is new today, enticing rhubarb to offer itself for pie, and encouraging black and gray morel mushrooms to emerge in cool, damp nights. That moon will also help the orchard grass to head up for harvest.

April 15: The days prior to the arrival of the April 16 high-pressure ridge can be expected to carry rain or snow, and are often the wettest of all April days; after this front, however, a major increase in the average daily amount of sunlight occurs.

April 16: By April 16, the sun reaches a declination of 10 degrees, 4 minutes; that’s about 70 percent of the way to summer solstice.
April 17: Honeysuckles and spicebushes have developed enough to turn the undergrowth pale green, and color rises through the woodlots and fencerows. Daffodils, Dutchman’s britches, violet cress, toad trillium, rue anemone, spring beauty, star of Holland, Virginia bluebells, toothwort and hepatica are at their peak. Cowslip, trout lily, Greek valerian, thyme leafed speedwell, watercress, violets, jack-in-the-pulpit, woodland phlox, ragwort, wild ginger and early tulips come into bloom.

April 18: Chances for highs in the 80s continue to climb across the nation’s center, reaching the same frequency as in mid-October by today.

Living with the seasons

Now that most everything is getting green and flowering, no one can hide behind winter hibernation, and almost everyone has made the psychological transition to a springtime attitude. Take advantage of the excitement, optimism and energy of that mindset by increasing your time out-of-doors, starting new projects, making vacation plans, popping the question and other things that require faith and a positive outlook on life.

Under sunny to partly cloudy skies of mid-April, put in field corn, oats and barley as the moon waxes. Band seed alfalfa as conditions permit.

Almanac classics
Stuck Fast
By Gail Denman
Patriot, Ind.
When I was small, my family lived on a hog farm near Pendleton, Ind. The field next to the house would flood every fall after harvest, and it would freeze in the winter.

There were four of us kids still at home, and we had a lot of fun on that ice. One year in March, right before spring, I got it into my head to go out there and see if that ice was still hard enough for skating.

I got about 20 feet into the field and started to sink into the mud. Before I could get turned around, I was stuck! It never occurred to me that the ground was thawed.

I yelled, “Help! Somebody help me!” But nobody came. My dad was way back in the barn, and the rest of the family was in the house.
Finally, after what seemed hours later, my sister came out looking for me. When she found me, I was sunk in to my knees. “Stay there,” she said. “I’ll save you!”

 Well, my sister was a little bigger than me, so she sank faster, and she got stuck, too.

Dad was returning to the house for dinner, and there he found us stuck and hollering for help. He came out and pulled us out of the mud, and threw us over his shoulders and returned us to safety. He had to go back out in the field to get our boots.

My sister and I ran back to the house and hid in our room for fear of getting a lickin’!