The very beginning is perhaps the best part of a garden. Now the breeze feels as soft and sweet as it used to be on the first spring day that I could go barefoot. The whistle of a cardinal comes from far off through the hazy air. The sun, riding higher in the sky, arouses not only the buds and seeds but also the dormant hopes of the gardener. The memory of past mistakes and failure has been washed out by winter rain. This year the garden will be the best ever.

-Harlan Hubbard, Payne Hollow

The Frog and Toad Mating Moon waxes throughout the first days of May, becoming full on May 5 at 10:35 p.m.

Seeding of all flowers and vegetables that produce their fruit above the ground is recommended prior to full moon, especially in Scorpio on May 4-6. After May 5, place bedding plants and vegetable sets, shrubs and trees during the moon’s third quarter.

The gibbous moon will move overhead in the middle of the night, making that time the best lunar period for angling (but the worst for dieting), especially as the barometer falls prior to the May 2 and 7 cool fronts. The full May moon not only stimulates frogs and toads, but is often associated with a rise in crime, rash behavior, passion and accidents.

On May 5-6, the Eta Aquarid meteor shower falls near Aquarius, low in the southeast several hours after midnight. The bright full moon, however, may limit the number of shooting stars you will see.

Mars, in Leo, lies in the western sky after sundown, travelling into far horizon by midnight. Jupiter reappears as one of the two morning stars (Venus is the other) in Taurus at the end of the month. In Virgo, Saturn is well up in the east at dusk, setting before dawn.

This time of May brings highs above 60 on 75 percent of the afternoons, and warm 70s or 80s a little more than half the years. May 2 is typically the coldest day of the period, bringing cool 50s on 35 percent of the afternoons, and a 20 percent chance for 70s or 80s.

Frost strikes only 10-15 percent of the mornings and is most likely after the first high-pressure system of the month passes through around May 2, and after the second system arrives near May 7. May 6 has an unusual 95 percent chance for clear to partly cloudy skies, making it historically one of only a handful of such days in the year.

Looking ahead, the warmest monthly days – those with the best chance, or 40 percent or higher for a day above 80 degrees – are May 11-14, 16, 20-22, 25  and 31. The coldest days, those with at least a 40 percent chance for highs below 70 degrees, are May 1-8, 12-13 and 15.

Zeitgebers of next week in a typical year include the budding of thistles and privet bushes, the reddening of strawberries, the forming of buckeye fruits, the opening of the first peonies and the full bloom of garlic mustard and buckeyes, meadow goatsbeard, sweet rocket, poppies, iris, early mock orange, Korean lilac and honeysuckle bushes, red-horse chestnut, wild cherry and locust trees.

April 30: Sweet Cicely is blooming in the woods when mayflies cluster near the water. Catbirds, thrushes and scarlet tanagers come to the bushes. Bullfrogs call when spitbugs hang to the parsnips.

May 1: Cool fronts are due to reach the lower Midwest on or about May 2, 7, 12, 15, 21, 24 and 29. Full moon on May 5 and new moon on May 20 could contribute to unseasonable cold and to unstable meteorological conditions.

Tornadoes, floods or prolonged periods of soggy pasture are most likely to occur within the following windows: May 3-12 and May 17-24.

May 2: Spring pasture now reaches its brightest green of the year, and haying moves towards the Canadian border at the rate of about 100 miles a week; it will be taking place almost everywhere in the United States by the middle of early summer. Spring wheat is just about all planted in the North, and the oat crop is in the ground between Denver and New York. Potatoes and commercial tomatoes and pickles have all been set out along the Great Lakes.

May 3: Soil temperatures average in the 50s by today in most of the nation, and winter wheat can be two feet high along the 40th Parallel. Half of the corn, sugar beets and potato crops have been planted. Weevils build up in alfalfa. Flea beetles eat the corn. Bagworms and powdery mildew attack the wheat.

May 4: Along the Atlantic seaboard, horseshoe crabs are mating, their numbers especially great when the moon is full (tomorrow) and the tide is high. In our wetlands, some touch-me-nots have eight leaves, some 12. Knotweed is at least chin high, hops way over your head.

May 5: Full moon today may increase the chances for frost. If the weather is mild, however, listen for the spring field crickets to sing. Then look above you; redbud flowers have turned to seed.

May 6: Johnsongrass, Sudangrass and other sorghums can change their chemical composition and produce prussic acid when the night brings a late spring frost. Be alert for signs of a negative reaction in your livestock if they are grazing the morning after a May freeze.

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