There’s an art of attending to weather, to the route you take, to the landmarks along the way, to how if you turn around you can see how different the journey back looks from the journey out, to reading the sun and moon and stars to orient yourself, to the direction of running water, to the thousand things that make the wild a text that can be read by the literate.

-Rebecca Solnit      
                     

The Apple Blossom Moon, having brought all the apple flowers into bloom (and then pulled them down), becomes full April 25 at 2:57 p.m. Rising in the evening and setting in the morning, this moon is overhead in the middle of the night.

Lunar conditions for field and garden planting continue favorable throughout the week, especially when the moon passes through Scorpio April 25-27. Fish with the moon above you around midnight – or at the second-best lunar time, midday.

Of course, full moon not only brings higher tides along the seacoasts, but higher tides in human affairs, as well.  Expect extra challenges with friends and family.

Late spring arrives this week, the warm weather creating unmistakable markers in the progress of the year. Among those landmarks: April 26 and 30 record freezing temperatures less than 5 percent of the time, the first time that has happened since late September.

Chances for a cold day in the 30s or 40s fall to only 10 percent on April 22, then plummet another 8 percent April 26. After April 22, chances for snow drop below 5 percent.

Beginning April 27, highs in the 90s become possible, and the daily chances for a high in the 80s pass the 20 percent mark. The chances for a high above 70s degrees are now 50/50 or better for the first time this year.

April 29-30 are usually the warmest days this week, with April 30 bringing a 90 percent chance for highs above 60 degrees for the first time since late September.

April 22: Be sure you continue to weigh your young livestock in order to monitor the appropriateness of your feeding program. If problems exist, the scale may be the first instrument to show it.

Among the records for all your goats should be a temperature history. Since each goat’s “normal” temperature may be a little different, an individualized temperature biography is a good way of being able to detect abnormalities and infections. Of course, what is good for the goat is good for you and your children!

April 23: Watch for mold in feed supplies as the weather turns warmer and more humid.

April 24: Flowering pears are passing their best, starting to get their leaves. Ferns are at least six inches tall in the new shade. Touch-me-not sprouts sport 4-6 leaves. The first yellow celandine blossoms in the alleys. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers mate as buckeyes come into bloom.

April 25: Seed all the rest of your flowers and vegetables in flats or directly in the garden. Throughout the South, farmers can even plant tender peanuts.

April 26: The older you get (they say), the more important color becomes in your life. If you are one of those people who are getting a little older all the time, you may find that perennial and annual flowers are even more necessary than vegetables and fruits.

April 27: Admiral butterflies hatch. Azaleas blossom in the warmest Aprils just as field grasses and winter wheat become long enough to ripple in the wind. Chickweed has filled in the woodland floor.

April 28: Sweet clover and wild lettuce are already a foot high. Hosta spears and lily-of-the-valley will be 6-9 inches tall, poison ivy and Virginia creeper leaves two inches long, mint and dock and great mullein and comfrey eight inches, Dutch iris 12 inches, cattails and pokeweed up to 24.

Black tadpoles swim in the backwaters. Bass move to the shallows. Great brown May bugs begin their evening flights.