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Poor Will's Almanack: April 19 - 25, 2022

Ohio Spring Miamisburg, Ohio.
Scott Cooper
/
Flickr Creative Commons

Poor Will’s Almanack for the fourth week of Middle Spring, the fourth week of the Gilded Goldfinch Moon, the first week of the sun in Taurus.

I keep daydreaming in spring, watching time, wanting things to stay the way they are. This past week, the daffodils were open all day and then the next day and the next. I even counted the blossoms to make them stay. One day, I had 166 blossoms, one day 179, one day, the very best day, today, 198.

They were new enough so that their flowers had not begun to wither. The weather was cool, but not too cool. The daffodils lasted and lasted, they were open all day and through the night. Every morning when I looked, there they were. Had I gone away they might have disappeared by the time I got back. So I stayed and I watched them on and on and on,

Quantum physics asserts that the "observer effect" is able to change the form of objects. Was it my constancy that kept the daffodils fresh? Was it the counting that kept them suspended in time? Or is self-deception always magic?

I stop the story here when the daffodils still keep their gold. The story, says my story-teller sister Maggie, only ends when you say it ends. I stop at the top of the tide.

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the first week of Late Spring. In the meantime, hang on to the present. Stop the story whenever you want.

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Bill Felker has been writing nature columns and almanacs for regional and national publications since 1984. His Poor Will’s Almanack has appeared as an annual publication since 2003. His organization of weather patterns and phenology (what happens when in nature) offers a unique structure for understanding the repeating rhythms of the year.