Moon Time: The Tufted Titmouse Moon becomes the Lenten Rose Moon at 7:07 p.m. on Jan. 27. The Lenten roses (also called hellebores) often produce their buds in late autumn and, their petals unravel in the thaws of late winter.
Sun Time: On Jan. 31, the sun reaches a declination of 17 degrees 35 minutes, one fourth of its way to spring equinox.
Planet Time: Locate Saturn east of Ophiuchus in boxy Libra before dawn.
Star Time: It is really late winter in the sky: Orion has passed due south by midnight and has started its descent. The Great Bear has moved around Polaris into the southern sky.
Weather Time: The Jan. 31 Front: This is the second weather system of late winter, and it is typically followed by an even more pronounced thaw (the Groundhog Day Thaw) than occurred after the previous two fronts.
February: Four wintry high-pressure systems define the first two weeks of February in Clark County; after the 18th of the month, however, the fortunes of spring gather momentum, and some of the mildest conditions so far in the year follow the three remaining February high-pressure systems. Major storms are most likely to occur around Feb. 3, 6-9, 14-18 and 24-25.
Zeitgebers: Events in Nature that Tell the Time of Year: When you hear the cardinals sing before dawn, you will know that frogs are mating in the Deep South and that salamanders will soon be breeding in the slime of Clark County wetlands.
Below the 40th Parallel, from South Carolina west to California, crocus, daffodil and tulip foliage emerges in the garden.
Storms associated with late-winter fronts sometimes bring starlings and red-winged blackbirds to area feeders.
Farm and Garden Time: As the days lengthen, take cuttings of roses, Russian sage, forsythia, viburnum, pussy willow, lavender and other flowering shrubs for fall planting and future bloom.
Late winter is also the time to treat ash, bittersweet, fir, elm, flowering fruit trees, hawthorn, juniper, lilac, linden, maple, oak, pine, poplar, spruce, sweet gum, tulip tree, and willow for scales and mites. Spray trees when temperatures rise into the upper 30s or 40s.
Marketing Time: Jan. 28 is Chinese New Year. If you missed marketing to this feast this year, plan to be ready in 2018.
Mind and Body Time: Diabetics should take special care of themselves between now and the arrival of spring. The most severe diabetic reactions generally occur when the S.A.D. Index is high (like it is this week: 70 on a scale of 1 to 75) and the weather is cold. PMS and angina are also worse for many people at this time of year.
Creature Time (for fishing, hunting, feeding, bird watching): Since the moon will be overhead in the early afternoon this week, plan to find your creatures then. Animals and fish should be most active as the Jan. 31 cold front approaches, pushing down the barometer.
Journal
I am tired and the sky is gray and the wind blows rain then sleet against my windows: Sundowning closes around me, and I settle in by the fire, let myself collapse into the stuffed chair by the wood stove with a drink and some Spanish peanuts.
Tonight the fire seems to connect me with previous fires, creating a continuity of time. I feel an association more through mood than thought that wakens me to so many forgotten times, indeterminate yet cumulative. The connection rises from backwaters that evoke closeness and affection, estrangement and sadness, murky souvenirs from the fluidity of time past, distillation of childhood, the smell of burning leaves from autumn bonfires, smoke and dusk together; family campfires at the beaches, and then over and over the home fires, the banking of the logs before bed, the stirring of the coals before sunrise, the all-day fires that dispelled clouds and snow and storms.
The sense of the fire is also tied to the ancestors, is the stuff of collective knowing passed down to me in this particular lifetime, embodied here as well as in ages far away. And so I am aware of an impending and looming terror of the fire’s absence, an ancient embodied knowledge of its absence.
I pull myself back to the immediate. I pay attention to the details in front of me, the denim of my pants legs warmed, touching my ankle and calf, the cooler air against my ears but not against my nose, the soot on the stove door.
After a while when I sip my drink, I am disappointed because the ice is melting too quickly. Reverie thins. I become disgruntled because my escape is so temporary. I feel the empty dish beside me: I’ve eaten all the peanuts!
Cardinal song from late winter to middle spring
Your sunrise time may be several minutes different from those given below (Eastern Standard Time), but the interval between sunrise and cardinal song will be relatively close.
Jan. 31: 7:45 a.m. (sunrise) 7:20 a.m. (first cardinal song)
Feb. 16: 7:27 a.m. (sunrise) 6:57 a.m. (first cardinal song)
March 3: 7:06 a.m. (sunrise) 6:33 a.m. (first cardinal song)
April 2: 6:18 a.m. (sunrise) 5:34 a.m. (first cardinal song)
May 2: 5:34 a.m. (sunrise) 4:43 a.m. (first cardinal song)
May 23: 5:14 a.m. (sunrise) 4:04 a.m. (first cardinal song)
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