There is a time when spring’s new leaves are just opened, the grasses are growing to their first tallness, violets- yellow and blue, -- cowslips, crowfoots, woodruff, false Solomon’s seal are in bloom, the woods are dense against the evening sky, but not yet as dark as in late spring, the time when the evening air echoes with the songs and cries of warblers, thrushes, pewees, and the frogs, with the trilling of toads ringing through the twilight, the time when the evening air in the lowlands is a perfume none other in the year ever equals – the intoxicating perfume of the opening leaves, the essence of leaf and blade, of petal and bud, of ground and water.

August Derleth, Walden West

NOTES FOR THE FOURTH WEEK OF LATE SPRING
THE TWENTY-FIFTH WEEK OF THE NATURAL YEAR
WHEN ALL THE PEONIES AND POPPIES FLOWER
AND DUTCH IRIS OPEN

The Rhubarb Pie Moon became the Duckling and Gosling Moon on May 13, and now it waxes throughout the week, entering its second quarter at 6:43 p.m. on May 20. Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, this crescent moon lies overhead in the middle of the afternoon.

PHENOLOGY: THE EASIEST LAW

It is the easiest law, the most obvious rule of all. When one thing is happening, something else is happening, too.

Here at the height of Late Spring, when white clover blooms in your lawn, then flea beetles are eating your garden greens. When buckeye flowers fall, then cedar waxwings are migrating north along the rivers. When garlic mustard flowers fade, then blackberry brambles are full of white blossoms. When March’s twinleaf has seedpods, then comfrey and horseradish are blooming in village herb gardens.

When yellow sweet clover opens along the freeways, then yellow swallowtail butterflies visit the sweet rockets in the pastures. When Sweet Cicely goes to seed, then all the tulip trees are blossoming. When gold-collared blackflies appear in the woods, then strawberries are ripe in local strawberry fields. When parsnips come into flower in the Lower Midwest, then sea turtles crawl ashore along the eastern Atlantic coast to lay their eggs.

When wild multiflora roses open, then listen for catbirds in the honeysuckles. When the first day lilies open, then scorpion flies are hunting smaller insects in the field and garden. When the winter wheat turns a pale gray green, then meadow goatsbeard opens in the byways. When red admiral butterflies come to town, then delicate green damselflies are hunting beside ponds and creeks. When daddy longlegs appear in the shade by the shores of the Great Lakes, then male alligators are bellowing out their mating calls in the southern Georgia swamps.

And since every connection is unnecessary and arbitrary, depending on the individual for its experiential and verbal form, the easiest rule is infinitely varied and has no boundaries. The radii of its application push out in every direction, become enmeshed with one another, form webs and ladders and nets of parallel beings and actions, far transcending causes and effects, linking time and space to the intent and whim of the observer.