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Poor Will's Almanack: March 3 - 9, 2015

Martin Kenny
/
Flickr Creative Commons

Bluebell growing season begins as its first dusky foliage emerges from the hillsides. Daffodil, chickweed, purple deadnettle, and dandelion blooming times unfold slowly just as clumps of nettles, shepherd’s purse, cress, clover and lamb’s quarters reach the spring tipping point and spill across the waysides, fields and gardens.

The migration of red-winged blackbirds peaks as pussy willows come out all the way.   Wolf spiders hatch in the gray fields. Koi frolic in ponds, carp in the rivers. Red peony stalks, barely visible a few weeks ago, have pushed above the mulch. Lady bugs hatch under logs. Salamanders mate in the slime. Adolescent skunks, raccoon groundhogs and opossums, explore the nights.

The early morning robin chorus grows in power, and ducks arrive in their mating plumage. White Tundra Swans reach the shores of Lake Erie.

Early in the month, deep winter's Orion has moved off to the west by 10:00 p.m., and Corvus, May's corn and soybean planting constellation, appears on the horizon. Spica, which will be centered in the southern sky on evenings of the first heat wave, rises from the east. June's Corona Borealis follows it.

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back next week with notes for the fourth week of early spring, the fourth week of the Flowering Moss Moon and the third week of the sun in Pisces. In the meantime, go out side before you go to bed. Find Orion finally retreating toward the horizon from winter.

 

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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.