The seasons, like greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents. Spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about 15 miles a day. It ascends mountainsides at the rate of about a hundred feet a day. It sweeps ahead like a flood of water, racing down the long valleys, creeping up hillsides in a rising tide. – Edwin Way Teale

In the Sky

By April 16, the Sun reaches a declination of 10 degrees four minutes: that’s about 70 percent of the way to summer solstice.

Before sunrise, Hercules has moved to near the center of the sky. The summer triangle, which includes bright Vega, Altair, and Deneb, are just a little behind Hercules to his east. The Milky Way passes through the triangle, separating it from autumn’s Pegasus rising on the eastern horizon. The Corona Borealis has shifted into the western half of the heavens, and the pointers of the Big Dipper point almost exactly east-west.

 

The April Moons

April 15: The moon enters its second quarter.

April 23: The moon is full.

Weather Trends

Rain is the rule for April’s second quarter. After the third major high-pressure system passes through, however, a brief mid-April dry spell typically occurs on the 11th and 12th, chances of precipitation falling to 25 percent. The 11th is often the brightest day in the first half of April, bringing an 80 percent chance of sunshine, the best chances since the 7th of March. As for temperatures, chances of highs below 50 degrees fall to less than 10 percent on the 11th, where they remain until they drop to 5 percent on April 22. Milder highs above the 60s occur better than half the time on all the days of this quarter except on the 10th, when cooler conditions typically prevail. Frost strikes an average of 30 percent of the nights.

The Natural Calendar

In the woodlands and parks, toad trillium, trout lilies and Jacob’s ladder are ready to bloom. Hepaticas are blossoming, as are spring beauties, but twinleaf and bloodroot will fade quickly. Violets bloom in lawns throughout the area.

Mounds begin to show on your lawn as moles wake up and hunt grubs and worms. Carpenter bees appear around the house and barn, looking for nesting sites.

From now on, the chance of snow below the 40th Parallel rapidly decreases until it becomes only one in 100 by April 20.

Mosquitoes bite you in the garden. Tent caterpillars begin to hatch on wild cherry trees. Pheasants and woodcocks are nesting in the woods and along the fencerows.

Mulberry, locust, tree of heaven, viburnum, and ginkgo send out their first leaves. The white blossoms of decorative pear trees open throughout the Lower Midwest.

This week of the year, the handle of the Big Dipper comes far into the southern sky, and the pointers (the two stars of the Dipper’s cup farthest from the handle) are positioned almost exactly north-south after dark.

Magnolias, redbuds, lilacs, dogwoods, cherries, peaches, apples, quinces, maples, and pears are almost always flowering near this date. Frogs and toads are mating: listen for their calls on warm evenings.

Countdown to Summer

• One week until tadpoles swim in the sloughs

• Two weeks to morel season

• Three weeks until clover blooms

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

• Five weeks to the first strawberry pie 

• Six weeks until the first orange daylilies blossom

• Seven weeks until roses flower

• Eight weeks until the first mulberries are sweet for picking and cottonwood cotton drifts in the wind.

• Nine weeks until wild black raspberries ripen

• 10 weeks until fledgling robins peep in the bushes

In the Field and Garden

The first field corn is usually sown by the end of the week, and asparagus is up in the garden. First strawberries flower. Just six more weeks remain before frost-sensitive plants can be put outside without danger of being damaged by the cold.

Grape vines begin to leaf, a sign that commercial cabbage planting is underway.

Pasture plants often have an unusually high-water content in April, and your animals may not get enough nutrition from this forage. Silage and hay supplements can take up the feeding slack.

Wood mint is at least eight inches tall, and sweet for tea. Chives are ready for salads. Pastures are filling with golden winter cress and purple henbit.

New Year’s Day for immigrants from Cambodia, Thailand and Laos takes place April 14 -17. The Asian market often favors animals in the 60- to 80-pound live-weight range.

Solar Eclipse on High Street

By Bill Felker

Aug. 21, 2017

As above, so below.

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus

Early in the afternoon of the solar eclipse, I was cutting zinnias, removing the older blossoms to encourage the plants to produce new flowers.

Sparrows chirped off and on and cicadas buzzed and cardinals and crows called once in a while. High clouds sometimes filtered the sunlight, but the day was bright and mild.

Henry Myers had called the day before. He said he had heard that birds stopped singing in the middle of a solar eclipse as though they thought night had arrived, and that when the sun came through the moon again, the birds resumed their calls.

As the eclipse progressed, the dense honeysuckles and the high locusts and hackberries and Osage that surrounded the yard took on an amber glow. It was not a vision of September so much as a transfiguration of summer to a new sepia season, a thin burnished time far from the decay of autumn.

Then I noticed the cicadas were quiet, and I heard no birds. While I stood surrounded by zinnias, bright red became deep blood-red, yellow became gold, orange became sienna, pink became violet, violet turned purple, bright white was soft and creamy.

And toward the end of it all, as the filter of the eclipse was weakening, two monarch butterflies (which had been so rare this August) suddenly appeared from over the trees, soared majestically into the yard and floated beside me among the zinnias.

Then one of the monarchs rose high, then swooped toward the other as though he could not hold back, and his consort rose steeply to meet him, and they spun in rapturous encounter, swirling up and around and across the flowers in tight randori.

Then they returned to visiting the flowers where I stood until everything became the way it once had been, and then they flew south over the house together. Cicadas buzzed again. Sparrows chirped. A cardinal sang. Toward the west end of town, crows called out.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S SCKRAMBLER

KASC SACK

KASHC SHACK

KCMSA SMACK

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CATC TACK

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CAINAMOTPELK KLEPTOMANIAC

JACKKCALB BLACKJACK

THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER

RETTIS  

TERHIT  

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Copyright 2024 – W. L. Felker