April 12th
The 102nd Day of the Year
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair –
The bees are stirring – birds are on the wing –
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sunrise/set: 7:02/8:10
Day’s Length: 13 hours 8 minutes
Average High/Low: 61/40
Average Temperature: 50
Record High: 87 – 1930
Record Low: 19 – 1940
Weather
Thirty percent of the afternoons reach 70 degrees on this date, 20 percent make 60, forty percent 50, and just ten percent remain in the 40s. Skies are clear to mostly sunny 65 percent of the time, and rain falls just one day in four. Frost occurs one morning in three. Today marks the beginning of a dramatic increase in the possibility of warm weather. Afternoons above 70 degrees occur three times more often between the 12th and the 30th than between the 1st and the 11th.
Natural Calendar
Summer’s jumpseed and zigzag goldenrod sport four to six leaves apiece. Comfrey and lily-of-the-valley are seven-inches high. Wood mint is at least eight inches tall, and sweet for tea. Chives are ready for salads. Raccoons are born. Woodcocks spiral into their mating rituals. Eagles and goslings hatch. Tent caterpillars appear in the wild cherry trees.
Daybook
1983: Covered Bridge: purple cress, bluebells, twinleaf, chickweed, violets, Dutchman’s britches, toothwort, spring beauty, purple deadnettle full bloom. Sedum budding.
1984: Grinnell Swamp: Toad trillium open, Dutchman’s britches and hepatica full bloom, trout lily foliage six inches. A few leaves out on the umbrella-like May apple spears. At home, the first tulip blossomed.
1985: Yellow trout lilies and swamp buttercups blossoming along Yellow Springs Creek. Twinleaf and snow trillium gone, same as in 1983. Miterwort six inches. Large-flowered trilliums look like they’ve been up for several days. Bellwort leaves unraveling from their stalks. Meadow rue budding. First of August’s jumpseeds have emerged. Leaves start on apples, cherries, peaches, and pussy willows.
1986: First strawberries bloom in the garden, one day later than last year. Grape vines beginning to grow. Grackles still building nests in the back yard.
1992: Finches courting in the apple tree.
1993: Maple seeds sprout in the garden and in the hard dirt at Wilberforce. First substantial numbers of dandelions are opening now. Daffodils full bloom: every plant is open in the south garden. First magnolia flowers push out next to my door at school. Large-flowered trilliums have just emerged at the frog pond on Grinnell, touch-me-not leaves have gotten fat and wide, cover the stream banks like newly hatched, sleek, green butterflies. First swamp buttercup blooming at the swinging bridge.
1996: Everything seems to be happening at once now that the cold winter and Early Spring have given way to real spring. Yesterday the first bicolor tulip, yellow and orange, opened in the south garden, today, three more. Blue eyes are blooming beside the wilting crocus. Pink hyacinths started yesterday, are filling out today. This afternoon, the first bumblebee and the first two cabbage butterflies of the year in the daffodils – which are reaching full bloom all at once. Aconite leaves are big, flowers long gone. Puschkinia full and holding. Rhubarb leaves up to three inches, horseradish an inch or two, the honeysuckle leaves suddenly pushing out, pussy willows have full pollen, the magnolia on the east side of my building at Wilberforce opened all the way today. Scilla still full bloom. I saw the first crab apple flower opening on Monday, and now many of the fruit tree leaves are coming out. Raspberry leaves half an inch, too.
1998: Budding white mulberry in the back yard. Toad sings in the pond at 1:00 p.m. Full petal fall for pears. Toad eggs seen by Neysa.
2000: First money plants flower in the yard. First backyard apple opens. Redbuds and other apples coming in around the village. Very first garlic mustard along the path, large pink five-petaled honeysuckle open there. Daffodils in the yard are almost gone, tulips full bloom. Late maples in flower, box elders leafing. Most magnolias, white and pink, are decaying.
2001: First meal with asparagus, sweet and fresh, from the garden.
2002: Casey called: Toads began to sing on April 8th, about a week late.
2003: At North Glen: Bloodroot almost gone, Virginia bluebells and spring beauties in early full bloom. Toothwort, violet cress, hepatica, Dutchman’s britches, yellow trout lilies full. Hepatica has new leaves. Serviceberries, red quince, pink magnolias, and the downtown pears are still their best.
2005: Willows very green. Lilacs budded. Grass and pastures bright April green, just barely long enough to ripple in the hard wind today. Red quince fully opened. Pears, dandelions and daffodils full. Redbuds and beach show more color. At South Glen, bloodroot common and full flower of spring beauties, purple cress, toothwort. Toad trillium cracking. Grandiflorums and May apples – a few are up. Ginger leaves are well developed. Midseason tulips are coming in around the yard. The small, low red tulips are gone. Ginkgo leafing in front of Rachel’s house, stubby leaf clusters. White birch flowering at the same time as box elder. The woods clearly greening and filling in. Buckeye leaves about three inches long.
2008: To Dayton: Plum trees in full bloom along Memorial Drive. Full–pollen pussy willows seen here and there. Bluebells at home show blue and pink buds. More yellow tulips are budding.
2009: A chilly, sunny Easter, light frost but no damage to the magnolias or the bleeding hearts. The serviceberries are in full bloom now on Dayton Street, and the pears are lush along Xenia Avenue. Daffodils, squills and grape hyacinths continue at the peak of their flower, the cool weather keeping the trees and the bulbs from burning out.
2011: The sweet cherry tree is leafing now, and the first leaves are coming out on the blueberry bushes and the river birch in the back yard. Serviceberries, pink magnolias, decorative pears, star magnolias (losing petals in the wind) and weeping cherry trees all full bloom. One bud is almost open on the peach tree. Honeysuckle leaves are offering a modicum of privacy from the neighbors. A red velvet mite seen in the dirt as I was weeding this afternoon.
2012: Peggy’s geraniums are in bloom this morning. Our viburnum is in early full flower in spite of two nights of light frost.
2013: Wind and mist in the dark. The song sparrow was the early singer this morning: When I went out about 4:45, he sang once. Then I walked into robin song half a block later, maybe 4:50, then more robin song. Then the song sparrow again at a little before 6:00.
Drive to Gethsemani, Kentucky, two-hundred miles southwest of Yellow Springs: When I was packing the car for the drive, I noticed that many pussy willow catkins – full of soggy pollen – had been blown down in last night’s rain. The honeysuckle undergrowth was very light in south Dayton, thickened quickly on the way to Cincinnati, white flowering pears and plums coming in as I approached the Ohio River. (I had left Yellow Springs at the very cusp of pear flower emergence, the day that the pears were sure to blossom.) In northern Kentucky, the grass was so rich and bright, more pear trees in bloom, the high canopy flushed, and many taller trees presenting mounds of April green, redbuds and fields of dandelions and winter cress all along the freeway west, box elder flowers prominent from time to time, pink magnolias in the countryside.
At the monastery, plums, red quince, redbuds and forsythia in bloom, the Kentucky forsythia still light yellow, as though it were as new as the Yellow Springs forsythia. In the old graveyard, cherry petals were blown down in the wind, rolling across the stones and along the driveway. In the cloister walk, I found a medium-sized (maybe one inch) pale yellow flower with six petals on a thin stem, like a wild onion stem. Here the field peppergrass and the bittercress have gone to seed, lush chickweed in bloom, violets common. Outside the monastery chapel, 7:45 p.m., robin vespers ongoing.
2015: Pachysandra suddenly open full. Lilies-of-the-valley uncovered in the north garden, two to three inches. A few red nubs on the domestic roses. Some ferns up six inches. Squills, daffodils, grape hyacinths, forsythia all hold at their peak. Bluebells, hepatica and bloodroot open in the wildflower corner. The pale orange tulips joined the yellows (both planted in the 1980s) by the southwest corner of the south wall. Doves and sparrows mating, grackles courting, red-winged blackbirds singing through the day.
2016: First cardinal sang at 5:06 this morning. Pachysandra, east garden late, golden crocus and the west-garden scilla almost all gone, very first stubs of bamboo felt as I walked to the pond, forsythia and pear trees turning to leaves, serviceberry flowers gray, crab apples open in various places, the orange and yellow tulips fading, some snowball viburnum open along Dayton Street. A crow came to the back yard, first time I’ve seen one land here in a while. At the Cascades: trillium grandiflorum, miterwort, meadow rue, and bellwort in full flower, many spring beauties and hepatica hold on, and even Dutchman’s britches from Early Spring, one very old purple cress, a few toothworts.
2017: Spain: Walking from San Marcos into the old portion of Santiago: once again, a clear day, warming in the afternoon, Throughout the walk through town, through traffic and noise and construction, we found an urban spring: full azaleas, rhododendrons, sweeping plantings of cherry trees, their pink blossoms strong against the harsh city cement and stone, The ancient area near the cathedral had a few small plantings with tulips and pansies. At the hotel, late flowering apples, thousands of the minuscule daisies that have been with us from Madrid.
2018: To Clifton Gorge with Jill: Since our walk a few days ago, May apples have come up, leaves still mostly tight against their stalks; the first bellwort shows a little yellow; violet cress and Dutchman’s britches seem to be getting old; patches of white hepatica are the most common marker of the hillsides; bluebells still mostly tight but with buds elongated, deep blue; trillium grandiflora have joined the toad trilliums, but with only buds. Touch-me-not sprouts still have only two leaves. All this quite similar to today in 1984.
In the early afternoon at home, I saw the first bumblebee and the first carpenter bee in the glory of the snow (which remains at full flower in the porch garden. The hostas have started to push up through the mulch, most just barely showing, three thin-leafed varieties up to four inches tall. Lily-of-the-valley shoots pace the shoots of the Asiatic lilies at about the same height.
2019: Violets suddenly common in the lawn, a large patch of dandelions at Stafford and Dayton streets, Peggy’s pear tree and Don’s serviceberry trees opening in the south wind, winter cress heading up beyond Ellis Pond, no geese in the fields at all, red quince buds fat, first tulips, red, seen along Winter Street, weeping cherry trees in full bloom throughout the village. Lil’s maple, the Danielson’s maple and Mrs. Timberlake’s maple are all in bloom. Dusky periwinkle flowers along the sidewalk, and Leslie saw a redbud starting and one azure butterfly.
The flowering pears are holding up the sky
Like a mother whale bearing her baby up for its first breath.
This one stands like flowing horse curried by the wind
Singing to star-slathered canyons and coral-draped islands
In the turquoise eye of Spring
This one’s a pyramid of small-leafed acrobats balancing darkness.
A shaving brush shadow of Van Gogh’s cypresses
Dusted with powdered sugar, dipped in half-lit green salsa.
It’s clear some inner geometry directs the buds.
That flowers can watch the petals of the sun unfold.
That a raindrop disappears into ground, then pokes its head out
Like a white rabbit from crabapple bloom.
That Venus holds up a candle as monkish moths
Illuminate the book of night.
That a tree, embossed with globular rosettes,
Spilling perfume like a broken decanter,
Is both particle and wave.
The breeze weaves sun/moon breath in the branches.
Robert Paschell