What is the Vernal Equinox?

There are 4 times each year that people acknowledge, celebrate, petition, or otherwise engage solar forces. The two solstices winter and summer, the shortest and longest days & nights each year. And, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, when day and night transition through the moment of equal light and dark.

A simple celebration acknowledging the vernal equinox when Spring begins.

As a gardener, light and temperature have a significant impact on my life. In fact, they define my active outward life and even inform my inward contemplative nature. I've found these two phenomenon guide much of the activity I engage in each year.

Today is March 20, 2021. This morning the garden, complete with blooming plants in every sector, welcomed me on my morning round. My task, to create a bouquet or two, perhaps even 3 for celebrating the light and warmth and the beginning of spring. Hooray, less clothes, with the fire in the hearth less hungry, there is now more time for outdoor planting, foraging, and frolicking. What a great morning for bouqueting!

As I gathered the viburnum, daffodils, plum, and lungwort blossoms, the dark green yew and red dogwood twigs next to the golden willow, I realized this was a delightful way to learn phenology, the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life.

That beautiful dance of life all around us. The weather, plants, birds and animals one encounters in daily life simply jotted down a few times a week begins to weave a beautiful web of life of which we, as the observer, are a part.

Try it. Go out with the intention of picking a bouquet within walking distance of your home. Name the plants you know. Are there some you don't know? Great that's the challenge...find out who they are! Have fun. Enjoy getting to know your garden and neighborhood while practicing the science of observation and become a skilled observer of place. Welcome home!