Moon Time: Lunar perigee (when The Maple Flower Moon is closest to Earth) occurs on March 3, and the moon enters its second quarter at 6:32 a.m. on March 5.
Sun Time: This week, the sun reaches two-thirds of the way to spring. It took almost six weeks for it to move the first third, about four weeks to move the second third, and now it will take fewer than three weeks to travel the rest of the way to equinox. By March 3, the day's length becomes a full two hours longer than it was on December's shortest days.
Planet Time: Venus disappears as the evening star, but it reappears toward the end of the month as the morning star. Jupiter, in Virgo, has moved into the west before sunrise.
Star Time: Before dawn, all the constellations that ride the Milky Way into summer lie in the east. To the far north, Cassiopeia zigzags towards Cepheus, the house-like constellation just east of the North Star. Following the Milky Way to the south is Cygnus, the Northern Cross. Below Cygnus is Aquila, with its bright star Altair. Below Altair: July's Sagittarius.
Weather Time: The March 3 Front: As the last front of February moves toward New England, mild temperatures occur in Clark County more often than any time during the first three weeks of March. Skies often clear with the passage of the March 3rd high, but then they darken quickly as low pressure anticipates the March 5th front with showers or snow.
The March 5 Front: The day before this front arrives is typically one of the wettest days of the month, with rain or snow likely 70 percent of all the years. Once the March 5 front moves through, expect steady winds and brisk temperatures followed by sun.
The March 9 Front: March’s third front signals an increased likelihood of storms almost everywhere in the country; this weather system is accompanied by floods and tornadoes more often than any other front during the first three weeks of the month.
Zeitgebers: Events in Nature that Tell the Time of Year: Lupine leaves push out of the ground beside the crocus, snowdrops, and aconites. Woodchucks dig up the hillsides, making new dens. Ducks scout the rivers for nesting sites. Daylily spears are strong. The rivers are often high, and carp mate in the shallows.
Flocks of robins continue to move north even in the coldest springs. Red-winged blackbirds sing in the swamps. Red-tailed hawks, the horned grebe, the common snipe, all types of gulls, and black ducks migrate across the Midwest.
Bumblebees and carpenter bees work in the flowers, a sign that it’s time for termites to swarm.
Farm and Garden Time: This is the earliest date for planting most hardy vegetables directly in the garden along the 40th Parallel. Farmers also put in oats, spring wheat, and ryegrass for quick vegetative cover. Only 11 weeks remain before the most delicate flowers and vegetables can be planted outside, four weeks until most hardy varieties can be set out.
Fertilizer spread on lawn and field will have a month to dissolve in the ground before April or May planting. Remove old rhubarb and asparagus stalks, cleaning out around the beds, digging in well rotted manure. Uncover and fertilize strawberries.
Marketing Time: Continue to prepare for the Easter Market, which peaks two weeks before April 16.
Mind and Body Time: Cloud cover and inclement weather continue to keep seasonal affective disorder high during the first weeks of March. The day keeps lengthening, however, and improved meteorological conditions toward the end of the month push the S.A.D. Index (that measures forces contributing to seasonal stress on a scale of 1-75) down into the less threatening 40s after equinox.
Creature Time (for fishing, hunting, feeding, bird watching): Fishing should be most productive during the afternoon when the moon is overhead. Air temperatures are expected to heat up through the first days of March, and the shallows may be warming in the sun by noon. Plan your expeditions as the barometer falls during the days between cold fronts. Abrupt changes in weather will encourage gulls and grackles and maybe even woodcocks to move to the region. Listen for song sparrows to announce the arrival of more robins (that start to sing next week).
Journal
Casey called me around noon yesterday to say that in all his years he had never seen so many robins in one location.
“They’re all over the place,” he told me. “There must be hundreds of them just hanging out.”
He noted now it was relatively common to see flocks of 30 or 40 robins in the late winter moving through honeysuckles to eat the last of the berries, but this flock indeed was unusual. It could be, in fact, that this was the flock that brought the number of local robins to critical mass, to just the right number of robins to begin the spring chorus. That ritual of mating song begins in the first week of March and follows a schedule all its own.
When the crocus bloom in the garden, then I get up early in the dark and listen closely, I hear the robins in the distance, their steady, blended mating calls filling the high trees. They start about 8 a.m. this time in the month, their song moving earlier as the sun rises earlier until late July, when they are too busy tending to their fledglings to greet the dawn.
Reckless Early Spring
Until the arrival of Snowdrop Winter on Feb. 25, early spring had come head-over-heels into Clark County. After a January six degrees above average and a remarkable February (at this writing) over 11 degrees above average, the land responded with change not seen since the warmest January-February on record in 1890.
The thaw began with a record high temperature of 66 degrees on Feb. 18. Many daffodils were budded that morning, and snowdrops, aconites and snow crocuses were in full bloom, pussy willows about half emerged; tulips and hyacinths and even a couple of peony shoots were up three inches. After the sun burned away the fog on the 20th, the first mosquito came in my open porch door and attacked.
One of the most remarkable events occurred on the 21st. The morning was mild, 52 degrees before sunup. I went out about 6:30 listening for cardinals. A small tan moth flew away into the dooryard garden as I went down the steps. There were no birds until 6:47, and then I heard a robin whinny. Two minutes later, a robin singsong call, the first of the robin mating chorus for the year. Ordinarily, robins do not sing before the first or second week of March, and the earliest I had recorded it before was March 2 of 2011.
Throughout the day, a flock of grackles (grackles often arrive with the robins) appeared at my feeder. Violet crocus were opening all over. In the afternoon, I found the very first blue squill of the year, outrider of daffodils.
Feb. 22: A fifth mild day: The robin chorus was underway once again when I went outside a little after 7. Leaves were emerging on the lower honeysuckle branches. A precocious white hepatica was in flower along the river. In the alley at home, I found the first henbit and bittercress blooming, and forsythia buds were ready to open along the street.
The 23rd brought a record high of 69 degrees. Robins were in their mating chorus when I went outside at 6:38. Ed showed me a deep-purple iris reticulata on his property. Many forsythia flowers came fully open, one daffodil tried to unravel, and some standard crocuses bloomed, white and purple. Peony, daffodil and hyacinth stalks were surging, a few more squills showing. Boxwood, red quince, multiflora rose bushes and Japanese honeysuckle were leafing
The 24th was the last and the warmest day of this February heat wave (with a record high of 76 degrees). Three daffodils opened all the way overnight; two more came in throughout the day, and this was ten days earlier than I had recorded the first daffodil since I started keeping records.
More mosquitoes were flying in the afternoon, small moths and ichneumans in the woods. I found maples in bloom, some already shedding their flowers. Pussy willows were all white against the blue sky. The first cabbage butterfly flew across my dooryard garden; the earliest I had seen one before was March 8 of 1983.
And Chris even told me he heard peeping spring peepers, maybe the earliest they had peeped around here since the hot winter of 1890.
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