The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches....

Walt Whitman

EPHEMERIS FOR THE FIRST WEEK OF MIDDLE SPRING

The Nineteenth Week Of The Natural Year

When the Earliest Wildflowers Blossom

The Golden Goldfinch Moon, continuing to color the finches, wanes through its third phase this week, entering its final quarter on April 6 at 5:37 a.m.  Rising after dark and setting in the morning, this moon is overhead near dawn.

MARKERS FOR THE ADVANCE OF MIDDLE SPRING

April 1:  Middle Spring begins today, encouraging the white, pink and violet hepaticas to open.  Spring beauties, violet cress, harbinger of spring, bloodroot, bluebells, twinleaf, small-flowered buttercup, toad trillium, Dutchman’s britches, and toothwort are coming in around them.
April 2: Today is the average date for yellow forsythia to bloom, complemented by early daffodils and blue grape hyacinths.
April 3: Pear trees start to open along Xenia Avenue.  Red quince, star magnolias and the last of the cornus mas open, too.  The peak period of pussy willow pollen is ending.  
April 4: Swamp buttercups are coming in at Jacoby, rue anemones at the Cascades. Begin your bluebell walks -  Bluebell Season can last through the end of April.
April 5:  Nettle foliage is six to eight inches tall, just right for greens.
Skunk cabbage leaves are more than half size (about ten inches long, eight across) in the swamps when creeping phlox blossoms in town.
April 6: 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.  Japanese knotweed catches up with the rhubarb (just about big enough for pie).
April 7: Violets bloom in your lawn. Daffodils, scilla, pushkinia, anemone, and hyacinths are at their brightest in local gardens.   
April 8: Toad trilliums (the low trilliums with the dark red flowers) are up in the woods.  Baby groundhogs have come out of their dens.  Water striders are courting now.
April 9: When you see tulips in bloom in town, then cowslip is just opening  in the wetlands.
April 10: Ash trees bloom. Apple buds cluster, waiting for the sun of middle April.
April 11:  Privets are filling out.  Branches of the multiflora roses are almost completely covered with foliage.
April 12: Bleeding hearts have hearts when sugar maples blossom.
April 13:  Asparagus is often big enough to be cooked for supper. Young hummingbird moths and bumblebees come out to sip the annual mass bloom of dandelions. Honeybees look for pie cherry and peach flowers.
April 14: Black and gray morel mushrooms generally come up at this time of the month, just about the time that yellow trout lilies open. Another marker for morels: hawthorn trees and wisteria are flowering.
April 15:  This is usually the beginning of crabapple, redbud and dogwood time along the 40th Parallel.  Honeysuckles and spicebushes have developed enough to turn the undergrowth pale green.