In this week's episode, notes from Bill Felker's 40 years of observing what happens in nature.
Bill Felker: Today, the 18th day of the year's second month, the sun reaches a declination of almost 12 degrees, the halfway point to Equinox. Now the sun, which took about 60 days to travel to this point, suddenly doubles its speed, entering wet and fertile Pisces and initiating the season of early spring: a six-week period of changeable conditions infiltrated ever so slowly by warmer and warmer temperatures that finally bring the maple trees and early bulbs to bloom.
Early spring links the late winter cold with the lushness of April, and it is made up of clusters of color and motion and sound and gatherings of new sprouts and leaves.
The benign thaws of early spring tell Ducks and Killdeer to check out sites for laying eggs. Jenny wrens make nests in the milder afternoons and call out moths and water striders.
The ground temperature often approaches 35 degrees, the point at which earthworms become active again, and soon they'll be crossing roads and sidewalks in the milder rains telling all the salamanders to mate in the warming slime.
More pussy willows are opening.
Ragwort and dock grow back in the swamps during early spring. Skunk cabbage blossoms. Yellow aconite and white snowdrops in yellow and purple snow. Crocus bloom. More pussy willows are opening. The pollen season, which ended with early winter, begins across the South.
All that pollen riding north on the warming winds, prophesying honeybees and butterflies, and the warblers of May.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will's Almanack. I'll be back again next week with notes for the second week of early spring. In the meantime, don't be discouraged if the weather is cold. Early spring is really here.
Bill Felker contributes to newspapers nationwide, including the "Yellow Springs News." Bill resides in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Poor Will's Almanack is brought to you by Tree Care Inc., offering services in arboriculture throughout the region. Trees make life better.
