Now every motion of the day

presents another portion of the Spring, the calling of the cardinal and the jay, the robin’s whinny, juncos on the wing. – Robert Ames

In the Sky

Feb. 18 is Cross Quarter Day: the Sun reaches halfway to equinox. It enters Pisces at the same time, marking the astronomical border of the season of Early Spring, a six-week period of changeable conditions infiltrated ever so slowly by warmer and warmer temperatures that finally bring the maples and the early bulbs to bloom.

On the star clock of the night, the Big Dipper, which lay due east of Polaris at 10 p.m. in late December, now intrudes deep overhead, well into the southeast. Orion, which filled the eastern sky before midnight at solstice, has shifted far into the southwest. Procyon is now the brightest star in the high south, not Sirius.

And the Opossum Mating Moon will grow throughout the week, entering into its second quarter on the 16th and becoming full on the 24th.

Weather Trends

Feb. 15 has the highest incidence of highs in the 50s and 60s of any time so far in February – a full 40 percent of the afternoons reach those. That’s the first time since Dec. 15 that the likelihood of mild temperatures has been so great. And those statistics provide a neat numerical parenthesis to winter:  Dec. 15 is the pivot date for the arrival of really severe weather in the region; Feb. 15 is the spring pivot date. On the other hand, the full moon on Feb. 24  increases the likelihood of severe weather.

The Natural Calendar

More than half of the pussy willows have opened in a typical year. And all along the 40th Parallel, people are getting ready to tap maples for sap. The day’s length is a full hour longer than it was on Dec. 26.

Azaleas bloom in Alabama. In the lowlands of Mississippi, swamp buttercups, violets and black medic are open. In the Lower Midwest, skunk cabbages are opening.

Owlets and young bald eagles grow inside their eggs. Riding the southwest winds, meadowlarks, starlings, cedar waxwings, snow buntings, eagles, killdeer and ducks of all kinds migrate, accelerating the appearance of spring.

When you see small brown moths on warmer afternoons, then you know that ducks are looking for nesting sites. Striped bass are often biting in lakes across the Lower Midwest as the sun warms the shallows. When you see tulip foliage emerging from the ground, then horned owlets hatch in the woods and sweet corn is coming up along the Gulf coast. Redbuds and azaleas are in full bloom in northern Florida, rhododendrons just starting to come in.

Sometimes the weather doesn’t change for the better in the middle of the year’s second month; sometimes the cold is worse than in the middle of January. But it’s the sound that changes and fills the silence of dormancy, songs accumulating like spring leaves.

Fields of daffodils open in southern Georgia, and throughout the South, honeybees and carpenter bees collect pollen from yellow dandelions, silver and red maples, blue toadflax, white clover and mouse-eared chickweed.

When wild multiflora roses sprout their first leaves in the Ohio Valley, then wildflower season has begun in the Southwest and bald eagles are laying their eggs in Yellowstone.

Countdown to Spring

• Just one week to the first significant snowdrop bloom and to major pussy willow emerging season.

• Two weeks to crocus season and owl hatching time and woodcock mating time.

• Three weeks to the beginning of the morning robin chorus before sunrise.

• Four weeks to daffodil season and silver maple blooming season and the first golden goldfinches.

• Five weeks to tulip season and the first wave of blooming woodland wildflowers and the first butterflies.

• Six weeks until golden forsythia blooms and skunk cabbage sends out its first leaves and the lawn is long enough to cut.

• Seven weeks until American toads sing their mating songs in the dark and corn planting time begins.

• Eight weeks until the peak of Middle Spring wildflowers in the woods.

• Nine weeks until the Great Dandelion and Violet Bloom begins.

• 10 weeks until all the fruit trees flower.

In the Field and Garden

Think about ordering roses, hawthorn, raspberry, tansy, hollyhock, peppermint, thyme and chamomile, all herbs that fight abortion in your flock and herd (and, of course, in humans too).

Spray fruit trees with dormant oil when high temperatures climb into the 40s and freezing temperatures are expected to stay away for 24 to 48 hours.

If you hear spring peepers (they sound like “peep - peep”) or wood frogs (they sound like a flock of ducks), then you really know it’s almost time to let the livestock out to the driest, greenest piece of ground.

If you need a guard animal for your goats, consider getting a cow. If raised with goats, a single cow will think it’s a goat and will keep dogs and coyotes from threatening the herd.

Don’t let your pigs, especially your piglets and weaner pigs, get caught in late-winter drafts. Wind chill can kill a young pig.

Almanack Literature

Newspapers in the 19h century often tried to pad their news with strange facts and figures. On Nov. 30, 1871, the Celina Journal published the following curious information.

“Fish have great tenacity of life. It is believed that the carp has attained the age of 150, and the pike a still greater age. In fact, a pike was caught in a lake in south Germany in 1497 on which was found a ring bearing this inscription: ‘I am the fish which was first of all put into this lake by the hands of the Governor of the Universe, Frederick II, 5th of October1230.’ The fish weighed 350 pounds and was nineteen feet long.”

“An Amazing Jump”

A 19th century news “exchange” sent newspaper subscribers all manner of odd material. Here’s something from August 1887:

“An Eastern newspaper reports that “an eight-ounce green frog has jumped an amazing 94 feet. But it turns out that the amphibian, startled by the approach of a bird, accidently leapt off a cliff above the Hudson River.”

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S SCKRAMBLER

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OMOD DOOM

OOMRB BROOM

EUEMSR RESUME

OMOB BOOM

EUMF FUME

EEUPRSM PRESUME

OLOBM BLOOM

EUEMFRP PERFUME

OBROEDM BEDROOM

THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER

NWONK

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In order to estimate your SCKRAMBLER IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find a typo, add another 15 points to your IQ. Yes, you are a genius.

Will’s Almanack for 2024 Is Still Available

You can still order your autographed copy of the Almanack from www.poorwillsalmanack.com. Or you can send a check for $20 to Poor Will at P.O. Box 431, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 453867. Or you can order from Amazon.

Copyright 2024 – W. L. Felker