If you mark down observations about nature year to year—what blooms when, what the weather is doing at the time, what birds or other animals and insects appear or depart on certain dates—and compare them, then you are at least informally practicing phenology. Phenology is the study of recurring life-cycle stages among plants and animals, and also of their timing and relationships with weather and climate, according to the USA National Phenology Network, which also calls this system of interactions “nature’s calendar.”
It’s not the actual dates on a calendar, of course—not things like “plant peas at St. Patrick’s Day,” or “sow tomatoes indoors at tax time” that I use as approximate guidelines when writing my monthly chores lists—but factors including daylength, temperature, and rainfall that affect what happens when year to year, and can serve as cues for the gardener. Nature doesn’t read the printed calendar like we do; I’m not sure what the hellebores and snowdrops (top photo) are trying to tell me out back today.
The tricky thing about phenology is that everyone experiences, and interprets, the cues a little differently. The garden blogger who reacted to my pea-planting, Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening, has written about
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