EPHEMERIS FOR THE TRANSITION WEEK TO MIDDLE SPRING

The Eighteenth Week Of The Natural Year

The Golden Goldfinch Moon, entering its second quarter on March 23, waxes gibbous throughout the week and becomes full on March 29 at 10:25 p.m.

Jupiter and Venus remain the morning stars of late March and April, and Saturn continues to traverse the night in Virgo. Mars follows Orion in Cancer, slowly drifting retrograde (east) toward Leo.

THE CLOSE OF EARLY SPRING

No matter what the weather, Early Spring starts on Cross-Quarter Day (February 18), the sun’s halfway point between solstice and equinox, and ends on March 31. Even though the amount of snow and the temperatures were atypical this year, the advance of high-pressure systems followed its normal pattern. A thaw did occur on schedule between the 19th and the 23rd, but the amount of snow cover disguised the embryonic season. The cold front of the 24th brought Snowdrop Winter, as usual, even though the snowdrops were a foot below the top of the snow (but fully budded).

Another front of March 3 continued to keep the snow on the ground, but the sunny skies of that high-pressure system brought the definitive thaw of 2010, melting all but the most shaded microclimates and the tallest drifts. Suddenly, yellow aconites, violet and golden crocus and white snowdrops were in full bloom, pussy willow catkins emerged completely, and the first daffodils came into bloom.

In the last week of Early Spring, ducks and geese pair up along the rivers, and juncos depart to their breeding grounds in the North. Red-winged blackbirds arrive in the wetlands as pussy willows get their pollen. By the March 26, cardinals sing near 7:00 a.m., and if you get up half an hour earlier, you will hear the first notes of the great predawn chorus of robins that waxes through May and June.

By this week of the year, chickweed, small-flowered bittercress, and the first dandelions blossom in the alleys, and the earliest bulbs – the snowdrops, aconites and crocus – are peaking or declining. Maples give up their sap and then start flowering. Termites (looking like small, winged ants) are swarming.
In the rivulets and springs, the soft, fat sprouts of touch-me-nots appear, a sign that mourning cloak and polygonia butterflies (that overwinter here as adults) will soon be looking for sun and sustenance. The golden flowers of the cornus mas shrubs are forecasting forsythia blossoms in a week. May apples and toad trilliums push up on sunny slopes, and snow trillium, twinleaf, bloodroot, violet cress, hepatica and bluebells burst into bloom.