It is through the power of observation, the gifts of eye and ear, of tongue and nose and finger, that a place first rises up in our mind; afterwards it is memory that carries the place, that allows it to grow in depth and complexity. For as long as our records go back, we have held these two things dear, landscape and memory.

Barry Lopez
    
AN EPHEMERIS FOR THE FIRST WEEK OF MIDDLE SPRING:
HEPATICA WEEK

The Singing Toad Moon enters its second quarter at 9:34 a.m. on April 2. It continues to grow until it becomes completely full on April 9 at 9:56 a.m. waking American toads from their dormancy as well as bringing all the rest of the hepatica plants into bloom throughout the lower Midwest. Rising in the afternoon and setting after midnight, the moon is overhead in the evening.

Venus remains in Pisces throughout April, no longer visible as the evening star, but appearing in the east as the morning star. Mars joins Venus in Pisces, moving retrograde from Aquarius. Jupiter rises in Capricorn several hours after midnight, coming almost due south by dawn. Saturn, in Leo, is visible overhead at dusk, and sets as Jupiter comes up.

The blooming of violet, white and pink hepatica always announces the arrival of Middle Spring along the 40th Parallel. Just after hepatica buds open, the first wave of wildflowers comes in across the woodland floor, including bloodroot, Dutchman’s britches, violet cress, twinleaf, periwinkle, spring beauty, and small-flowered bittercress.  Toad trillium, early meadow rue and May apples are pushing up out of the ground.  Cowslip is budding in the swamp, and leaves grow long on the skunk cabbage.  In local gardens, shoots of Japanese knotweed, hosta, phlox and lupine emerge beside the daffodils and grape hyacinths in bloom

The first buckeye, apple and peach trees leaf out in the early days of Middle Spring.  At dusk, frogs and toads are singing. Killdeer become common, and woodcocks call near sunset with a nasal sounding "peent."  Barn swallows come to the barns, and the first baby barred owl hatches.

When hepatica blooms, lawns are almost long enough to cut. White-flowered star magnolias open all the way, plum trees blossom, and decorative pear trees start flowering. Then nettles, chicory and leafcup are six to eight inches tall, Asiatic lilies and columbine three to five inches.  Ragwort and garlic mustard are forming clumps; some sweet rockets and money plants are getting ready to send out their flower stalks.  Hops vines twine around the honeysuckle. Water rushes and purple loosestrife, water lilies and pickerel plants have suddenly produced foliage. Earliest rhubarb succumbs to pies.