Surely
there is a great Word being put together here.
I begin to hear it gather in the opening
of the flowers and the leafing-out of the trees,
in the growth of bird nests in the crotches
of the branches, in the settling of the dead
leaves into the ground, in the whittling
of beetle and grub, in my thoughts,
moving in the hill's flesh.

Wendell Berry

EPHEMERIS

FOR THE THIRD WEEK OF MIDDLE SPRING

The Twenty-First Week Of The Natural Year

When All the Apples Trees Are Blooming

The Rhubarb Pie Moon, waxing  throughout the period,  enters its second quarter on April 21 at 2:20 p.m., bringing the possibility of rhubarb pies to residents all along the 40th Parallel.

The crescent moon, setting in the west well before dawn, will be gone when the Lyrid meteors fall through the Summer Triangle after midnight between the 17th and the 26th.

April 21 is Cross-Quarter Day, the day on which the sun's position reaches its halfway point to summer solstice. Cross-Quarter Day is only five days away from the arrival of Late Spring.

THE LOWER MIDWEST ON CROSS-QUARTER DAY
Throughout the woods, find yellow bellwort, tall meadow rue, large-flowered trillium, nodding trillium, bluebells, miterwort, purple, white, and yellow violets, Jack-in-the-pulpit, columbine, ragwort, Solomon’s plume, winter cress, wild phlox, wood betony, and wild geranium. The basil American Colombo leaves are huge and fat, and the central flower stalk has started to grow. Great mullein has nine-inch leaves, and Japanese knotweed has grown up to four feet high. Deep red flowers have appeared on the wild ginger. Cowslip, swamp buttercups, ragwort, and lush, long skunk cabbage leaves mark the wetlands.

In town, forsythia flowers fall this week while grass is seeding, and small-flowered buttercups and celandine bloom in the alleys. Virginia creeper and poison ivy leaves are at least half developed. Purple lilacs are open above the creeping phlox, the late tulips, and patches of dandelions. Crab apples and small-flowered dogwoods come in after petalfall starts on the pears and weeping cherries. Leaves push out on the redbuds when the snowball viburnum and the azaleas blossom.

Migrating termites look for new homes on Cross-Quarter Day. Carpenter bees build their nests in your siding. Big brown June bugs begin their evening flights. Bats are mating after dark. The first of  this year’s monarch butterflies (the offspring of those that overwintered in Mexico) arrive this week.