About Wintering Insects Awake
March 5 - March 20
First Pentad, March 5 - 10
Second Pentad, March 11 - 15
Third Pentad, March 15 - 20
The season of “Wintering Insects Awake” is when life begins to reemerge. This is the last season before the spring equinox, and we can feel life all around us, preparing for the jubilance of spring. Birds are singing, butterflies are flitting, and the once-gray landscape begins to flush with color as daffodils, dandelions, and primrose emerge. March can be a capricious month. In many places, winter does not release its grasp easily, as evinced by the strong winds of March. We can’t help but feel the skies changing just as our hearts begin to warm. As Alexis likes to say about this month, the orchestra is warming up for the concert, which is to follow. Spring feels inevitable, and the world is waking up full of wonder.
Wintering Insects Awake
Podcast Episode
In this invigorating episode, "Wintering Insects Awake," Alexis and Kit are swept away by March winds to the mountains and the seaside as they traverse this season of awakenings. Our co-hosts reflect on a year of Season by Season, while looking forward to the seasons still to come. In Hiro's Corner, a trio of fragrant plants are on the menu: ninniku, nira, and nobiru.
Click here for poems & songs featured in this episode.
Words of the Season
In the Sky
March winds
Spring Mists
The First Butterfly of Spring
Spring Sunsets
Rainbows
In the Ground
March Mountains
Laughing Mountains
Spring Mud
Wintering Insects
Dandelions
Cowslip Primroses
Garlic, Garlic Chives
Butterbur Scapes
In the Water
The Seaside in Spring
Clam Digging
Eating Shellfish
Firefly Squid
In Our Lives
St. Patrick’s Day
Graduation Day in Japan
Recommended
Reading
Are you ready for spring? Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnum helps you start your journey to the season ahead.
The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson reminds us of the importance of family and the innate hope and history of a single seed.
If you suddenly feel a spring in your step and are eager to chase a rainbow, Looking for the Lost: Journeys through a Vanishing Japan by Alan Booth will guide you through lost corners of the country.
Got an appetite for green? A Feast of Weeds: A Literary Guide to Foraging and Cooking Wild Edible Plants by Santis Ada De and Luigi Ballerini will satisfy that craving.