EPHEMERIS FOR THE FIFTH WEEK OF EARLY SPRING

The Seventeenth Week Of The Natural Year
When Finches Start to Turn Gold
And the Earliest Daffodils Bloom

The Golden Goldfinch Moon, new on March 15, waxes crescent throughout the week, entering its second quarter on March 23 at 7:00 a.m. Rising in the middle of the day and setting in the middle of the night, this moon is over Yellow Springs in the afternoon.

Spring equinox arrives at 1:32 p.m. (EDT) on March 20. Also on the 20th, the sun enters the stars of Aries.

 PARISH PHENOLOGY

    “The field of Nature being beyond the power of any one man to cultivate in full, let everyone begin with his own parish, and till that area intensively,” noted 18th century naturalist Gilbert White. 
        Phenology is a practice of tracking what happens when in nature. The parish phenological observer, one who watches what-happens-when in the local world of nature, gathers and collates scraps of information, and there are never enough scraps. To the parish phenologist, all the pieces are useful pieces, all the pieces have meaning, and all the pieces eventually become interconnected.
       The natural history of any region offers an infinite number of primary sources, and the process of collecting and cataloging can be the occasion not only for compulsive distraction but for making associations and philosophy.
       The concept of awareness is fundamental to a whole range of psychological and spiritual events in a progression towards some kind of fulfillment or awakening or relationship. Watching the world is one form of journey to the center, a method of penetrating and cultivating consciousness. If, in meditation, the meditator watches thoughts like leaves carried downstream in a river, one can, in phenological rumination, substitute specific leaves or flowers or birds. Absorbed in the year’s metronome of fauna and flora, the mind can empty itself of other issues.
       Awareness of natural events also provides simple mantras for daily living, and the whole swell of the year becomes a koan or scripture for contemplating time and place, for puzzling out a personal space within the parish, finally, perhaps, for breaking through and participating in its soul.