The dawn chorus is quieter now, and at least half-catbird. A squirrel carries a leafy twig through the treetops at sunrise like a flag.
July 2010
7/16/2010
A little wood satyr—brown butterfly with yellow-rimmed eyespots—lands on the glass door and pivots at the center of its reflection.
7/15/2010
Fresh buds have appeared on one of the two wild grape sprigs I planted at the base of the dead cherry. A nuthatch calls in the growing heat.
7/14/2010
With the power out, my house seems unnaturally quiet compared to the warble and hum of a humid summer morning. A cicada’s buzzer goes off.
7/13/2010
Tansy blooms beside the porch. Black ants and harvestmen wander the allegedly insecticidal leaves; only the yellow flowers remain untouched.
7/12/2010
Cloudy and cool. Up to its snout in grass, a deer sneezes. The quiet squeaks of a hummingbird circling the beebalm.
7/11/2010
On the garlic tops below the porch, the skins are peeling back, burst by the pressure of insurrectionary mobs with wild green hair.
7/10/2010
A tussock moth caterpillar dangling in mid-air turns pendulum in the breeze, its silk line visible only as a sliding gleam against the blue.
7/9/2010
Dark burgundy leaves on a dame’s-rocket, browning seedheads of dock, the one yellow bracken—autumn is making inroads despite the heat.
7/8/2010
The first bindweed flower has opened low to the ground, its white ear-trumpet pointed toward the rising sun. The whine of a cicada.
7/7/2010
A phoebe’s spiraling dive ends with an audible snap of its bill. A catbird improvises from the lilac, switching branches after each line.
7/6/2010
One tulip tree limb is a-quiver: a pair of squirrels nibble on each other’s fur. Love or parasites? A cricket calls from under the bergamot.
7/5/2010
The ornamental cherry’s last leaves are dying. A silent wood thrush watches a tanager so scarlet it throbs in the light-drenched crown.
7/4/2010
A rustle from the top of a tall locust: two great blue herons jab at the thorny twigs, spread their wings and launch into the bluest sky.