Early Spring: frost melts down

The furrow in the West Wind,

Plowshares glisten in the sun,

The sleek, black land shines open. – Virgil (bf)

In the Sky

Before midnight, Leo and Regulus are overhead. The Pleiades and Taurus lead Orion into the far west. The Big Dipper protrudes deep into the center of the sky. By 6 a.m., the stars have become a prophecy of Late Summer, August’s Vega almost overhead, Hercules a little to its east, the Northern Cross to its west.

As Early Spring deepens, the Termite Migration Moon grows rounder and rounder, becoming a full moon on the 25th. This lunar phase occurs at a stirring time in the season when morning bird song reaches its peak, with the robin chorus leading the way, and cardinal song, mourning dove song and song sparrow song fill the day’s first light. And if the weather is mild, termites will join the awakening insects and mammals of March to search for new nesting and breeding locations.

Weather Trends

The last quarter of March brings dramatic changes. For the first time since Oct. 22, there is a 5 percent chance of highs reaching 80 degrees. And on the 31st, those chances double. On the 23rd, the odds for morning frost are about one in two, but on the 29th, those odds fall to just one in four. In the warmest years of all, frost can be gone until October or November (but an average season brings 20 more dawns below the freezing mark). However, this year’s full moon on the 25th will favor chill over heat.

The Natural Calendar

 When pussy willows emerge all the way, pick succulent leaves of nettles for greens, and find chickweed blooming in the woodlots and alleyways. Wild parsnips grow back. Mock orange leafs out.

Clematis leaves unfold beside new growth of the dodder. Comfrey leaves reach two inches long. Motherwort swells into clumps, and purple deadnettle is in full bloom. Lamb’s quarter, beggarticks, pigweed and amaranth sprout, and the first periwinkle flower petals unfold.

Canadian geese nest and lay their eggs. Ragwort develops buds, and touch-me-nots sprout in the swamps. Willow trees glow yellow-green with new foliage.

White cabbage butterflies now come out to lay eggs on your cabbages in the milder afternoons.

In average years, violet periwinkles bloom in the garden, snow trillium and violet cress along the rivers. Question mark and tortoise shell butterflies join the cabbage butterflies to look for nectar. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers arrive seek insects in your yard.

Countdown to Spring

• Just a few days until golden forsythia blooms and skunk cabbage sends out its first leaves and the lawn is long enough to cut

• One week until American toads sing their mating songs in the dark and corn planting time begins

• Two weeks until the Great Dandelion and Violet Bloom and the peak of wildflower season begin

• Three weeks until all the fruit trees flower

• Five weeks to the first rhubarb pie

• Six weeks to the great warbler migration through the Lower Midwest

• Seven weeks to the first cricket song of late spring

• Eight weeks to the first orange daylilies blossom

• Nine weeks until the high canopy begins shades the garden

• 10 weeks until the first mulberries are sweet for picking and cottonwood cotton drifts in the wind

In the Field and Garden

Plant the first sweet corn for the earliest ears (if they survive the frosts). And it is now pea planting time almost everywhere the snow has melted.

Black raspberries should be thinned to about three of the largest diameter canes, and side branches should be trimmed.

Transplant shade and fruit trees, shrubs, grape vines, strawberries, raspberries, and roses while the ground temperature remains in the 40s. after full moon next week. Cut raspberry leaves for tea. The first comfrey leaves may also be ready for tonic.

Also after full moon, worm livestock and pets. Perform annual vaccinations and do blood work. Check hooves/feet. Protect pet rabbits from spring weather extremes. Close-graze pastures to encourage later growth. Don’t forget the paperwork for registering the animals you intend to sell or show.

Almanack Literature

Tippy and Roosty

By Cecelia Winer, Ashland, Ohio

Growing up, we had a dog called Tippy. He had some rat terrier in him and was fearless. He took on all comers.

During the 1940s, they had WPA and had men working digging ditches and other things. The men would put their lunch bags close to where they worked. Tippy would creep up, steal the lunches and bring them home to his doghouse, which was situated at the back of the chicken coop.

Once my mom saw this man running into our yard. At first, she thought he was trying to steal chickens. She did not see Tippy sneak into his house. Then she heard the man shouting, “He stole my lunch!”

Tippy was a great guard dog that day, and he stayed quietly ensconced in his house, guarding his sandwich.

During the war, meat was scarce. In the winter, people kept their meat outside in the cold. Many times my mom would see Tippy dragging a string of hot dogs. One time he was dragging a large ham almost as big as he was.

Our neighbor ran a drycleaners next door, and every morning Tippy would walk to her front door for meat scraps she brought for him. Every day except Sunday; then he would just lie out in the sun.

For Easter my parents got us chicks and we raised one into a rooster. We called it Roosty.

Tippy took on rats almost as big as himself and large dogs. But as Roosty grew up, one day I looked out to see Tippy sitting in the rain. There in the doghouse door stood Roosty.

On warm days Roosty ousted Tippy from his window where the men delivered our coal. The coal pebbles were warm, and that spot was Tippy’s favorite to lie.

Roosty was the bane of Tippy and the young women who walked into work. If they were walking past, Roosty would run behind them and peck their legs, ruining their stockings, which were difficult to buy during the 1940s.

I would hear the women saying, “Is he there?” and they would cross the street so they didn’t walk past the ROOSTER.

My father gave Roosty away because he was a nuisance. He gave him to a man he worked with who had a farm. And about three weeks later, the man said that Roosty had been run over.

I think they took a hatchet to him. 

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