DECEMBER "WHEN-THEN"

When the last milkweed seeds scatter along the roadsides, then sunset is the earliest of the year and Canadian geese start arriving in Louisiana.
When you hear honking above you in the night, get up and search the dark sky for sand hill cranes moving south.
When sand hill cranes leave the Midwest, then brown pelicans are nesting along the Gulf of Mexico and larch trees are turning color in Maine.
When the second flowering of forsythia has ended, then gull migrations are finished, too – which completes all major bird migration activity through the nation’s midsection for the year. That is the time to prune fruit-bearing bushes in the Ohio Valley.
When harvest is complete in the fields, fertilize with organic matter, phosphorus and potassium to reduce soil compaction.
When early winter arrives just after the moon is new, then sow your first bedding plants. Then order legume seed for next year’s winter pastures. Schedule your frost seeding for January and February. Also order sunflower, beet, Jerusalem artichoke, pumpkin, comfrey, carrot, kale and turnip seeds for you and your livestock.
When crocus and snowdrop foliage pushes up through the mulch, then the first pussy willows will be cracking, and mistletoe will be visible high in the branches of Mississippi woodlots.
When hepatica blooms in December, then lore suggests that the following spring will be warm.
When the yellow leaves of the New England aster fall, then the pear leaves and the beech leaves (the last holdouts of the canopy) will soon be falling, too.
When beech leaves have all come down, then mangoes are in full bloom throughout southern Florida, and Florida grapefruit will soon be ripe.
When the very last leaves have been taken from the trees, then ducks have completed migration and below-zero lows remain a possibility until aconites and snowdrops bloom.
When great flocks of crows gather for the winter, then early spring is only eight weeks away, and red squirrels get white tufts on their ears.
When camel-back crickets appear in your house at night, expect colder weather and mice to follow.
When honeysuckle berries have all fallen, then the pussy willows will be open and spring will be here.

THE SEASONAL CALENDAR
The Week the Pear Leaves Fall
When sunset reaches its earliest time of the year, the brittle leaves of the pear trees fall. This is the time during which the second bloom of forsythia flowers ends, when witch hazel blossoms wither, and the last of the golden beeches, the willows, osage and oaks come down.
The corn and soybean harvests are usually complete all around the county, and growth of winter wheat slows in the cold. New garlic shoots are firm and green, but they've stopped growing and remain at their middle-autumn height. The Christmas tree harvest has begun, and the last poinsettias have come north.
Even though this is one more week of endings, it is not a week of stasis. Spruces are growing new needles. Caraway and henbit can be flowering in the sun, and a dandelion or a periwinkle will open in scattered fields and lawns. Fresh chickweed, which sprouted at the end of the summer, is blossoming here and there. Catnip sometimes grows back beside thistle, moneywort, chickweed, wild geranium, leafcup, henbit and yarrow.
In greenhouses and sunrooms, tomatoes sown in July will be getting ripe as December approaches. Marigolds, zinnias, impatiens and other bedding plants saved from the cold will still be flowering. The first buds will have formed on mother-of-millions. Yellow and pink hibiscus flowers will blossom, opening before dawn, fading and falling by three in the afternoon.

The Season of Winter Clarity
Early winter brings a clarity and new vision that the other seasons lack. The final leaves of the year are coming down; they leave the world completely bare and revealed for the first time since April. The year seems finite and approachable now, its secrets open. In the hundred days that lie ahead, there is enough time to look at everything, time to enumerate the complex remnants of the summer at leisure, rebuild the past and document its progress with simple, reassuring measurements, examining seed pods, collecting the dead grasses, hunting for cocoons.
In winter, most things can be listed on one or two hands. Instead of the thousands of species of insects, some spinning craneflies and a few pale moths are usually the only bugs about. The absence of migratory birds magnifies the rattle of the remaining downy woodpeckers, isolates the calling of the crows, the chatter of sparrows, black-capped chickadees, titmice, kingfishers. Solitary sparrow hawks are back to hunt mice. Only a few ducks overwinter on the rivers. When a cardinal sings, it is a welcome lonely prophesy of spring, as precious for its rarity as for its beauty.
Instead of hundreds of wild flowers changing the landscape weekly, winter brings the gift of constancy. The black centers of the empty milkweed pods face the sun, free from change, hiding nothing. Basal leaves of thistle and garlic mustard lie flat, close to the ground; they remain passive and unmoving until March. Sleek heads of ironweed, dry and soft, wait for sparrows week after week. Only one flower blossoms in the warmest years: the skunk cabbage in the swamp; it often stays in bloom all winter, long enough for almost anyone to find it.

A Week of Winter Color
As early winter settles in across the center of the northern hemisphere, the colors of the newly revealed landscape catch the eye more easily. Hawthorn berries, holly berries, crabapples and rose hips stand out now. Brown-barked river birches, white birches and sycamores contrast with the black trunks of oaks and elms.
Red-twigged dogwoods shine against the snow, and sometimes a last late yellow forsythia or witch hazel will flower. Raspberries keep some purple to their leaves. Coralberries still hold their magenta. Japanese honeysuckle, like the pines, spruce and juniper, is still green. All the bittersweet hulls have fallen now from the vine, but many of the orange berries remain attached
The clear springs that wander through the river bottoms are streaked with cress, ragwort and buttercup foliage, oases of summer, almost never overcome by winter. Now barberry shows off its scarlet berries better than at any other time of year. Clumps of orange mushrooms sometimes grow on a fallen tree. Staghorns remain on the sumacs, blood red. In the garden, hardy flowering cabbage and kale show off their rainbows under clouds or sun.
On the woods floor, the leaves dapple the ground with brindle chromatics, bronze, cinnamon, hazel, fawn, chocolate. The champagne seed heads of the goldenrod and ironweed, the soft russet of the knotweed foliage, dead but hanging to its stubborn six-foot stalks, are set against the dove-colored sky, perfectly imaged in the gloss of the quiet river that inverts and so compounds their glory.

The Week the Days Begin to Lengthen
As daylight starts to increase, spring is waiting: new daffodil and tulip leaves lie just below the surface of the mulch, and the tips of crocus crouch in their beds. Dock, leafcup, buttercup, mint, ragwort, sweet rocket, plantain, thistles, great mullein, moneywort, red clover, celandine, forget-me-not, wild onion, henbit, and ground ivy foliage push every-so-gradually toward March. Deep in the woods, the earthstar fungus appears, shaped like a six-pointed star. Multiflora rose buds swell in the sun. One or two pussy willow catkins crack in the thaws. In warmer microclimates, moss can be long and flushed.
Sometimes a fat camel cricket will emerge in your kitchen at night, searching for sustenance. In the warmth of greenhouses, bedding plant seeding is fully underway, and young plants scheduled to be sold in April and May can have four to six leaves by now. In the chicken house, pullets which will produce summer eggs are hatching. White-tailed bucks in their gray winter coats are starting to drop their antlers. On farms, expectant ewes, does and cows quietly nurture their babies to be born in early spring.