Poor Will's Almanack

After the Groundhog Day Thaw is over next week, weather history says these should be some of the coldest days of winter. In many years, however, crocus, daffodil and tulip foliage emerges. Garlic planted in November has sometimes pushed out of the ground; cloves set in early October are already several inches high. Sometimes more than half of the pussy willows have opened. All along the 40th Parallel, people are getting ready to tap maples for sap. Signs are accumulating, spring a matter of

By this point in January, enough small changes have accumulated, in spite of the severe weather, to move the season into Late Winter, the anteroom to Early Spring, growing the birdsong that will fill the mornings of March, rousing small mammals to courtship. Now comes the close of windfall seding. The red honeysuckle berries have long ago fallen or been taken by birds. The orange fruit of the evergreen winterberry has completed its planting. Hawthorn berries give way. Overwintering robins eat

Sometimes the last days of Deep Winter carry a great thaw. One day I went out to the river in the warmth of such a thaw, when cumulus clouds sped across the sky in gusts of the southwest wind, and the water of the river was shining with low, brisk waves of silvers, blues and grays. The oaks of the far bank were black against the bright sky. Up the hill, patches of yellow Osage glowed like the flush of expanding spring buds. Below the trees, hardy green chickweed, wild onion, garlic mustard,

The last Christmas cacti are blossoming near the greenhouse windows, safe from the wind on the other side. My winter tomatoes hold motionless to their trellises. The red and pink and white geraniums brought in from the autumn, bloom, then fall, then bloom again. I have a journal of the greenhouse and the outside cycles. I keep a planting and nature log, and I carefully measure the natural progress of year. But now I'm losing interest in the records of that progress, am turning to plants that

The new Squashy Osage Moon watches over the earliest bedding plant sprouts of 2019, encouraging precocious coleus, pansies, geraniums and begonias with its waxing tide. And an inventory of outdoor flora for the New Year complements the lunar phase, so many plants now seeding or bowing as if to set their seeds. In my alley, tall coneflower stalks have collapsed around the telephone pole. In my south garden, the white boneset has toppled over, and the small white asters, their seed heads empty,

The new solar year, having opened with the winter solstice, lies open with all its moons waiting. The first moon of 2019 new next week is the Squashy Osage Moon, a Moon that remembers that ripens and breaks the fat, green Osage fruits of autumn, measuring the first advance of the year. In Feburary, a new sign of the coming spring: The Skunk Courting Moon, under which not only skunks but most small mammals like foxes and opossums seek mates. The Moon of March is the Cabbage White Butterfly Moon,

The gibbous Flowering Jessamine Moon waxes until it becomes full on December 22. After that, it wanes throughout the remainder of the week, reaching perigee (its most powerful position closest to Earth) on December 24. This week’s lunar position, coinciding with two major December high-pressure systems increases the likelihood for deep cold and precipitation throughout the country. And his week every single day is the shortest day of the year, as the night’s advance finally stagnates for

As Early Winter deepens, my fantasy looks past the cold into the ladder of time toward Early Spring. My fantasies climb the ladder, counting One week remains before the Sun starts to climb just a little toward equinox. Two weeks before the arrival of Deep Winter and the coldest days of the year. Three weeks before aphelion, the Earth’s position farthest from the Sun. Four weeks until owls and foxes mate. Five weeks until the tufted titmouse begins its mating calls and pines start to pollinate

The Starling Murmuration Moon becomes the new Flowering Jessamine Moon at 2:20 a.m. on December 7. Although Jessamine does not flower in northern states during the winter, its appearance in the South opens the long encroachment of new life against the frozen barrier of winter. Along the Gulf of Mexico, other signs join the Jessemine to push the spring north. Some clover and chickweed foliage grow stronger with the sun. The roadside grasses are still tall and green, and many azalea bushes are in

The Starling Murmuration Moon wanes into its final phase and darkens throughout the first days of December. Sunset reaches its earliest time of the year by the weekend, and remains at that setting time until the end of December’s second week. On my walk at the end of Late Fall, with Sun and Moon both waning, I see the heads of thimble plants have come undone. All the stubborn pear and beech and Osage leaves are down. At the river’s edge, the water is rippled blue, black, green, and brown, bare