Up from the sea the wild north wind is blowing

Under the sky’s gray arch;

Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing

It is the wind of March. – John Greenleaf Whittier

In the Sky

Equinox occurs on March 19 at 11:06 p.m. (EDT). On the other hand, March 17 is equilux in most years, when day and night are actually equal. On spring equinox, the Sun is directly above the equator, but because of refraction of sunlight by the Earth’s atmosphere, the actual equality of the day and night occurs on the 17th.

An hour or so before sunrise, the wandering stars of Capricorn lie in the southeast. Sagittarius and then Scorpius (easily identified by the red star, Antares, in its center) fill the southern sky. West of Scorpius is boxy Libra. West of Libra, is Virgo, marked by Spica, the brightest of the western stars.

Throughout the week, the new Termite Migration Moon waxes through its first quarter, rising in the morning and setting in the evening, crossing overhead in the afternoon.

Weather Trends

With equinox, the chances of highs in the 20s fall below 5 percent for the first time since the middle of December. March 20 is typically the wettest day of the week, with a 60 percent chance of precipitation and the most thunderstorms since autumn. The 21st is the driest, with just a 25 percent chance. The 21st also brings the most sunshine of any day in the third week of March: 70 percent of those days are clear to partly cloudy. Only two other March days get so bright: the 7th and he 15th.

The Natural Calendar 

Crows are pairing and selecting nesting sites. Nettle tops are ready to pick for greens. Chickweed and dandelions flower in the woods. Ducks arrive from the south in their most attractive mating plumage. White tundra swans usually arrive along Lake Erie at this time of the month. In Washington, D.C., the florets of cherry trees are beginning to show in average years.

Flickers and purple martins migrate to the region. Lawn growth is now perceptible – two weeks before grass is usually ready to cut. Pods of the dogbane open.

Look for the purple blossoms of grape hyacinths, and color on the very earliest tulips. Skunk cabbage leaves grow big and fat. Snowdrops, aconites and snow crocus decline as peony stalks reach at least two inches above the mulch.

This week of Early Spring is marked by the spiraling of the male titmouse in his mating ritual, an increase in the number of honeybees, the early courting calls of flickers and pileated woodpeckers, the yellowing of goldfinches to about half of their summer color, cardinal song moving up to about 7:20 a.m. (EDT).

Mock orange leafs out, pacing the new honeysuckle foliage and the boxwood, the Japanese honeysuckle, lilac, black raspberry, multiflora rose and coralberry. In the greenhouse, tropical mother-of-millions blossom time ends just as day and night grow equal. In the late evenings, robins chant their vesper songs.

Countdown to Spring

• Just a few days to daffodil season and silver maple blooming season and the first golden goldfinches

• One week to tulip season and the first wave of blooming woodland wildflowers and the first butterflies

• 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 dark and corn planting time begins

• Four weeks until the Great Dandelion and Violet Bloom and the peak of wildflower season begins

• Five weeks until all the fruit trees flower

• Six weeks to the first rhubarb pie

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

• Eight weeks to the first cricket song of late spring

• Nine weeks to the first orange daylilies blossom

• 10 weeks until the high canopy begins shading the garden

In the Field and Garden

Inspect trees for winter damage. Remove dead and dying limbs. Begin yard cleanup.

Onions seeds and sets, potatoes, radishes, beets, carrots and turnips can be sown directly in the ground. Dig parsnip, horseradish, dock, and dandelion root for tonics. Set flats of pansies out of doors on milder days to harden them for late March planting.

This is the average time for flower and garden shows throughout the East.

Warm-weather crops could be ready to set out on May 1 if you start them this week. Try cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, and all delicate herbs or flowers indoors now. This is also an excellent time for seeding spinach directly in the garden.

Lettuce and other hardy sprouts can be moved to the cold frame. Eight to nine weeks until tender vegetables can be set out.

Almanack Literature 

The Way It Was Before?

By Sally S. Straight, Lexington, Ky.

Now you have heard about skunks in the outhouse, I am sure. Why, a while back, it was no surprise to encounter one of those beasts on the way to visit the “little house in back.” And sometimes if you left the door ajar a bit, the skunk would just happen to walk into the business section of the privy, and it would raise a real stink if you frightened it.

With the coming of indoor plumbing, you would think such problems would be things of the past. Most of the time that is true, of course, unless you happen to leave your back door ajar and you have just one bathroom in your house.

Because in the late winter and early spring, skunks are courting, digging up lawn grubs, and just plain wandering around. And sometimes they go where they don’t belong.

So anyway, one chilly early morning Daddy went out to check on the lambs and he accidently left the back door open. That must have been when Mister Skunk just happened to walk right in and apparently got lost, and ended up in our nice indoor bathroom.

The good thing was that the skunk did not spray any of the people in the house. The bad thing was that we had a fierce skunk hater, our golden retriever, Attaboy. And so, I woke up to some wild barking and snapping and then terrible skunk smells. It smelled so bad in the bathroom that we wished we had the old outhouse back. And in fact, we couldn’t use that bathroom for quite a while. In fact, we could barely use the house. I stayed home from school because I smelled like a skunk. Daddy went in to work, but they sent him home. Mama just threw up all day.

How long did it take to get the house back to the way it was before? I’m not sure anything will ever be the “way it was before.”

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S SCKRAMBLER

SSEM MESS

SESRTS STRESS

SESRIGD DIGRESS

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ESESNIF FINESSE

EIRPNCSS PRINCESS

SESECR RECESS

SSERGSNART TRANSGRESS

WDLRNSESEI WILDERNESS

SSSHHPDREEE SHEPHERDESS

GERSERS REGRESS

THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER

OTRS  

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SASPPRTO

TROPMI  

RUPPTOR  

UTRAQ  

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RSROTE  

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In order to estimate your SCKRAMBLER IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find a typo, add another 15 points to your IQ. Yes, you are a genius.

Poor Will’s Almanack for 2024 Is Still Available on Amazon.

Copyright 2024 – W. L. Felker