Word-Wednesday for March 18, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for March 18, 2026, the eleventh Wednesday of the year, the thirteenth Wednesday of winter, the third Wednesday of March, and the seventy-seventh day of the year, with two-hundred eighty-eight days remaining.

Wannaska Phenology Update for March 18, 2026
Spring Phenology Fever
Just two days from now on the spring equinox, Wannaska transforms from a barren, middle-of-nowhere place  into a Nature Party. So much to look forward to as spring unfolds: migrating ed-winged blackbirds, Canada geese, robins, and, of course, hummingbirds; weeping willow buds, flowing tree sap, and the first mushrooms; emerging black bear, chipmunks, skunk, turtles, and peepers. What are your favorite signs of spring?

2026 Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Sightings — It's begun...

March 18 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


March 18 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for March 18, 2026
Sunrise: 7:31am; Sunset: 7:33pm; 3minutes, 37 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 7:16am; Moonset: 7:29pm, New Moon, 0% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for March 18, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             34                     62                     40
Low              15                    -24                     20

The Spring Equinox
by Anne Ridler

Now is the pause between asleep and awake:
Two seasons take
A colour and quality each from each as yet.
The new stage-set
Spandril, column and fan of spring is raised against the
winter backdrop.
Murrey and soft;
Now aloft
The sun swings on the equinoctial line.
Few flowers yet shine:
The hellebore hangs a clear green bell and opulent leaves
above dark mould;
The light is cold
In arum leaves, and a primrose flickers
Here and there; the first cool bird-song flickers in the thicket.
Clouds arc pale as the pollen from sallows;
March fallows are white with lime like frost.

This is the pause between asleep and awake:
The pause of contemplation and of piece,
Before the earth must teem and the heart ache.
This is the child's pause, before it sees
That the choice of one way has denied the other ;
Must choose the either, or both, of to care and not to care;
Before the light or darkness shall discover
Irreparable loss; before it must take
Blame for the creature caught in the necessary snare:
Receiving a profit, before it holds a share.

March 18 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National SBDC Day
• National Biodiesel Day
• National Sloppy Joe Day
• National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day
• National Awkward Moments Day
• National Supreme Sacrifice Day
• Forgive Mom and Dad Day
• Sheelah's Day
• Feast Day of Fridianus

March 18 Word Pun
Sven asked the librarian if the library had any books on amplifiers.
The librarian said, “Yes, what volume would you like?”


March 18 Word Riddle
What is black when you buy it,
Red when you use it,
And white when you throw it away?*


March 18 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
FEAR, n., A sense of the total depravity of the immediate future.
    He either fears his fate too much,
    Or his deserts are small,
    Who dares not put it to the touch—
    Who'd rather pass than call.
                    —Earl of Montrose


March 18 Etymology Word of the Week
invent
/in-VENT/ v., create or design (something that has not existed before); be the originator of; make up (an idea, name, story, etc.), especially so as to deceive someone, from circa 1500, "to find, discover" (obsolete), a back-formation from invention or else from Latin inventus, past participle of invenire "to come upon; devise, discover." The general sense of "make up, fabricate, concoct, devise" (a plot, excuse, etc.) is from 1530s, as is that of "produce by original thought, find out by original study or contrivance." 


March 18 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1325 According to legend, Tenochtitlan is founded on this date on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico.
• 1507 Emperor Maximilian I names his daughter Margaret of Austria the first woman Governor of the Netherlands.
• 1662 First public bus service begins, promoted by Blaise Pascal.
• 1773 Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer premieres.
• 1781 French astronomer Charles Messier rediscovers global cluster M92.
• 1791 Robert Burns poem Tam o’ Shanter, is published.
• 1902 Arnold Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht premieres.
• 1902 Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso becomes the first well-known performer to make a record.

March 18 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1548 Cornelis Ketel, Dutch portrait painter and poet.
• 1578 Adam Elsheimer, German painter, cartoonist.
• 1590 Manuel de Faria e Sousa, Portuguese historian and poet.
• 1657 Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni, Italian Baroque composer.
• 1734 Joseph Schmitt, German-Dutch composer.
• 1756 Johann Christoph Vogel, German composer.
• 1781 Gustave Vogt, French composer.
• 1813 Friedrich Hebbel, German poet.
• 1838 Jan Stobbaerts, Belgian painter.
• 1840 William Cosmo Monkhouse, English poet.
• 1842 Stéphane Mallarmé, French symbolist poet.
• 1844 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer.
• 1849  Margaret Dockrell, Irish suffragist.
• 1864 Mikael Lybeck, Finnish-Swedish language poet.
• 1866 Dumitru Kiriac-Georgescu, Romanian composer.
• 1870 Frank Hoyt Losey, American composer.
• 1881 Paul Le Flem, French composer.
• 1882 Gian Francesco Malipiero, Italian composer.
• 1884 Bernard Cronin, English-Australian author.
• 1886 Marianne Philips, Dutch author.
• 1888 Joseph Csaky, Hungarian-French sculptor.
• 1891 Josef Šíma, Czech painter.
• 1892 Robert P.T. Coffin, American poet.
• 1898 Otto Jochum, German composer.
• 1901 William H. Johnson, African-American artist.
• 1904 Srečko Kosovel, Slovenian poet.
• 1909 Ljubica Marić, Serbian composer.
• 1914 César Guerra-Peixe, Brazilian violinist and composer.
• 1915 Richard Condon, American author.
• 1916 Louis Toebosch, Dutch composer.
• 1928 Julia Mullock, American architect.
• 1929 Christa Wolf, German novelist.
• 1929 Ctirad Kohoutek, Czech composer.
• 1932 John Updike, American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.
• 1933 Sergio Pitol, Mexican essayist, translator and author.
• 1934 Pavle Despalj, Croatian composer.
• 1936 Hans Peter Bleuel, German writer.
• 1939 Giannis Markopoulos, Greek composer.
• 1939 Isaiah Zagar, American mosaic artist.
• 1941 Wilson Pickett, American R&B singer.
• 1941 Wolfgang Bauer, Austrian playwright.
• 1945 Hiroh Kikai, Japanese photographer.
• 1945 Joy Fielding, Canadian novelist.
• 1949 Starr Danias, American ballerina.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge 
Write a story or pram from the following words:

• antoecian: /an-TEE-shuhn/ n.,  a person living at the same meridian as another or oneself, on the opposite side of the equator and at the same distance from it. Usually in plural as antoeci.
• bandoneon: /ban-/DON-ē-ən/ n., a type of concertina used especially in South America.
• flipe: /flighp/ n., the brim or peak of a hat or cap.
• gamp: /gamp/ v., to devour or eat greedily.
• gey: /ɡā/ adv., SCOTTISH, very, considerably.
• hobbil: /HOB-il/ n., a  foolish or stupid person.
• immure: /i-MYo͝oR/ v., enclose or confine (someone) against their will.
• mamelon: /MAM-uh-luhn/ n., a rounded protuberance; a hillock.
• nimfadoro: /nim-fuh-DOH-rō/ n., a foppish or dandyish man.
• thirl: /thər(-ə)l/, n., hole, perforation, opening; v., to pierce or perforate.

March 18, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
spring
/spriNG/ n.,  the season after winter and before summer, in which vegetation begins to appear, in the northern hemisphere from March to May, from "season following winter, first of the four seasons of the year; the season in which plants begin to rise," by 1540s, a shortening of spring of the year (1520s), which is from a special sense of an otherwise now-archaic spring (n.) "act or time of springing or appearing; the first appearance; the beginning, birth, rise, or origin" of anything. The earliest form seems to have been springing time (early 14th century). The notion is of the "spring of the year," when plants begin to rise and trees to bud (as in spring of the leaf, 1520s).

Spring officially begins on different dates depending on whether it is defined by astronomy (Earth's tilt), meteorology (temperature cycles), or phenology (nature's cues). Astronomical spring starts at the vernal equinox (the Word-Wednesday preference), while meteorological spring is fixed on March 1 for consistent data tracking. This year's spring equinox falls on March 20 at 9:46am, Wannaska Time. Spring also suggests rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth  metaphors, as reflected in the following words of noted writers:

Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!”

Robin Williams

The spring is coming. Yesterday the lambs were dancing, and the birds whistled, the doves cooed all day down at the farm. The world of nature is wonderful in its revivifying spontaneity.

D. H. Lawrence

Spring’s first conviction is a wealth beyond its whole experience.

Emily Dickinson

Everything is new in the spring. Springs themselves are always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. It always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness.

L. M. Montgomery

Spring cold is like the poverty of a poor man who has had a fortune left him—better days are coming.

Margaret Oliphant

It was one of the first days of spring: the spring had come late, with a magical northern suddenness. It seemed to have burst out of the earth overnight, the air was lyrical and sang with it.

Thomas Wolfe

In spring, nature like a thrifty housewife sets the earth in order…taking up the white carpets and putting down the green ones.

Mary Baker Eddy

Up here, spring is an explosion. For a week we’ll shiver in a nor’easter, walk out into a cold drizzle and at night reach for an extra comforter; everything seems to stand still, but with a curious feeling of latency; then suddenly, crack, bang, boom, it’s hot, it’s spring, and all the trees have burst into blossom like incendiary bombs.

Malcolm Cowley

The Spring is generally fertile in new acquaintances.

Fanny Burney

Spring never comes abruptly; it makes promises in a longer twilight or a day of warmer sunshine, and then takes them back in a dark week of storm.

Bertha Damon

Spring, in Connecticut, made fair false promises which summer was called upon to keep.

Edna Ferber

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Alfred Lord Tennysball

Spring is the season of hope, and autumn is that of memory.

Marguerite Gardiner

Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

Elizabeth Bowen

Birds that cannot even sing—
Dare to come again in spring!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

Margaret Atwood, “Unearthing Suite,” in Bluebeard’s Egg

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

Rachel Carson

Every year, back Spring comes, with the nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off, and the ground all mucked up with arbutus.

Dorothy Parker

When lonely feelings chill
The meadows of your mind
Just think if Winter comes
Can Spring be far behind?
Beneath the deepest snows
The secret of a rose
Is merely that it knows
You must believe in Spring! 

Alan and Marilyn Bergman, lyrics to the song You Must Believe in Spring

A little Madness in the Spring/Is wholesome even for the King.

Emily Dickinson

Everything is blooming most recklessly: if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I am thankful that in a troubled world no calamity can prevent the return of spring.

Helen Keller

Spring has finally come, and late spring at that. The rains have stopped and the sunshine is beautiful, almost painfully beautiful so that in the morning you look out and take a quick breath as you do when you are quickly, sharply hurt.

John Steinbeck

In our spring-time every day has its hidden growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.

George Eliot

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

Anne Bradstreet

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.

Ernest Hemingway

The older I grow the more do I love spring and spring flowers. Is it so with you?

Emily Dickinson

The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven—
All’s right with the world!

Robert Browning

I feel like a louse, or tick, for not having written sooner in answer to your nice letters, but have been having my spring orgy in the barn, settling arguments among the geese, taking temperatures, replacing young robins fallen from nests, stepping on the edges of hoes and rakes, challenging black flies to fifteen rounds without even attempting to make the weight, and constructing jury-rig incubators that would make Rube Goldberg blush.

E. B. White

From A Year with Rilke, March 18 Entry
The Interior Castle, from Seventh Duino Elegy

Nowhere, Beloved, will the world exist but within us.
Our lives are constant transformations. The external
grows ever smaller. Where a solid house once stood,
now a mental image takes its place,
almost as if it were all in the imagination.
Our era has created vast reservoirs of power,
as formless as the currents of energy they transmit.
Temples are no longer known. In our hearts
these can be secretly saved. Where one survives—
a Thing once prayed to, worshipped, knelt before—
its true nature seems already to have passed
into the Invisible. Many no longer take it for real,
and do not seize the chance to build it
inwardly, and yet more vividly, with all its pillars and statues.

The Gates of Hell
Auguste Rodin

Be better than yesterday, 
learn a new word today, 
try to stay out of trouble — at least until tomorrow, 
and write when you have the time.






*charcoal.