Don’t move. Stay still. And once you find a place that feels halfway right and it seems time, settle down with a vow not to move any more. Take a look at one place on earth, one circle of people, one realm of being over time.

Gary Snyder

EPHEMERIS
    The Robin Migration Moon wanes through its final quarter this week, becoming the Second Spring Moon on October 28 at 6:14 p.m. Rising in the morning and setting in the late afternoon, this dark moon is overhead in the middle of the day.

A CALENDAR OF WINTERCREEPER
    One of the invasive species that grows throughout the country is the wintercreeper vine, or euonymus fortunei. An Asian native brought to the United States one hundred years ago, it has probably thrived in the Midwest for at least half a century. Wintercreeper has dark green, oval leaves and often climbs local trees and outbuildings. It keeps its foliage and its color even through the most bitter Januarys.
    Like all perennials, this euonymus has a growth cycle that fills twelve months. Most of its phases are easily observed, and it is a steady companion with which to follow the path of the year. At the end of October, the vine shows off white or pale pink fruit that formed in early August. In the first weeks of November, the fruit capsules will begin to break open, revealing their orange seeds just as ginkgo and white mulberry trees lose their leaves.
    When honeysuckle and forsythia foliage finally gives way by the middle of December, the wintercreeper berries start to break away from their hulls, continuing to fall to the ground, joining the decaying Osage fruits to measure out the first three months of the year. Then, when snowdrops and aconites flower in our dooryards, when pussy willows are full of pollen and maple seeds sprout in the garden, the euonymus vines put on new growth, and the seed capsules themselves come down.
    By the middle of April, when large-flowered trilliums cover the forest floor, the fresh wintercreeper leaves have almost reached full size, and throughout the spring and early summer, their tiny buds gradually take shape, clearly visible when lilies blossom in village gardens. At the end of July, the buds break out in clusters of five-petaled yellow-green flowers that last until the middle of August. Then they form their white capsules that open when all the maple leaves are gone, displaying once again their orange seeds that slowly fall away like hourglass sand to fill the cup of spring.