It is Nature's rutting season. Even as the birds sing tumultuously and glance by with fresh and brilliant plumage, so now is Nature's grandest voice heard and her sharpest flashes seen. The air has resumed its voice, and the lightening, like a yellow spring flower, illumines the dark banks of the clouds. All the pregnant earth is bursting into life, like a mildew, accompanied with noise and fire and tumult. She comes dripping rain like a cow with overflowing udder.
Thoreau, Journal

EPHEMERIS FOR THE TRANSITION TO LATE SPRING

The Twenty-Second Week Of The Natural Year

When Garlic Mustard Blooms

And Apple Petals Fall

The Rhubarb Pie Moon, entering its second quarter on April 21, waxes gibbous throughout the week, becoming totally full at 8:18 a.m. on April 28.
Late in the evening, winter’s Orion is setting, and Cancer has moved well into the west. Leo and Regulus are overhead. June’s Corona Borealis and Bootes are prominent in the east.

A CHRONOLOGY OF LATE SPRING IN THE LOWER MIDWEST

Late Spring begins this week, the seasons of Early Spring and Middle Spring having brought snowdrops, aconites, crocus, daffodils, grape hyacinths, squills, bleeding hearts and tulips to bloom and fade in town. Hepatica, bloodroot, twinleaf, spring beauties, violets, dandelions, Jacob’s ladder, Jack-in-the-pulpit, trilliums, wild phlox, and cowslip have flowered in the woods and fields. Many of the trees and shrubs have blossomed, among them the pussy willow, red quince, forsythia, silver maple, cherry, red maple, crab apple, pear, redbud, dogwood, peach, star magnolia, pink magnolia, red oak, black walnut, red and white mulberry, box elder, and sugar maple. Honeysuckles have turned the turned the lower woodlots green, and the high canopy is filling in with new leaves.
In the next four weeks, Late Spring takes the landscape all the way into Early Summer, passing through the following (and many other) milestones until all the trees are fully leafed, average high temperatures reach the middle 70s, the danger of frost has completely disappeared, and the day’s length is only 20 minutes from its longest span.

Week One
The flowering of garlic mustard initiates Late Spring throughout alleys, gardens and the deep woods this week. The great dandelion bloom ends along the 40th Parallel and moves north into Michigan and Wisconsin. Fleabane opens along the bikepath, and Korean lilacs replace the standard lilac blossoms. Petalfall occurs on all the crab apple trees and redbuds. Tall grasses hide the bluebells. Chickweed and the sticky catchweed collapse into thick tangles. Cowslip disappears in the wetlands.

Week Two
Daddy longlegs become common in the undergrowth during the second week of Late Spring (usually the first week of May). Hummingbirds come to your feeders. The first strawberries and raspberries blossom. Sweet rocket, sweet Cicely, daisy, white clover, star of Bethlehem, lily-of-the-valley, sweet William, meadow goat’s beard, May apple, and wood sorrel almost always open. Mock orange comes into full bloom. A few early poppies and peonies unravel. Mayflies are out along the water. Spitbugs grow in the shelter of swamp parsnips, announcing that the first cut of hay will soon be underway.

Week Three
The third week of Late spring brings the peak of warbler migration, the appearance of swallowtail butterflies, red admiral butterflies, small, orange fold-winged butterflies, white-spotted skipper butterflies, blue-tailed dragonflies, and scorpion flies to local gardens, goslings and ducklings along the rivers, and webworms in the trees along the roadsides.

Week Four
In the last week of Late Spring, the third week of May, Northern Spring Field Crickets sing in the fields. Newly hatched doves, grackles and robins explore the honeysuckles. Tadpoles grow legs and swim to deeper water. Locust trees flower. Cedar waxwings and catbirds arrive to feed on the new mulberries. Blackberries and wild parsnips join sweet rockets in bloom along the roadsides. The high canopy fills in quickly now, closing off the sky in the deep woods until October.