Gloomy, but the birds seem excited, perhaps sensing an approaching storm. A titmouse fleeing a fight lands on a maple limb red with fungus.
red maple
1/10/2019
The top of a dying red maple has been blown down across my walk. The wind raises a zombie army of leaves to go staggering over the snow.
12/14/2018
Warmish and almost sunny, with mist between the trees. The chickadees and wrens are denouncing something hidden in the small hollow maple.
11/6/2018
With birches and maples at the woods’ edge all bare, I can see unimpeded up the hillside to small clouds lost among the trees and the rain.
10/23/2018
A swarm of maple helicopters. I sneeze and a wren begins to sing. A kinglet rotates in time to the music. We’re in this dance together.
4/9/2018
This spring is—let’s be honest—not spring-loaded. Eurasian shrubs haven’t begun to green up. Even the red maple buds have yet to swell.
9/19/2017
A monarch butterfly en route to Mexico glides over the house, past the orange leaves on the last living branch of a hollow maple.
5/9/2017
Cold and clear. A squirrel climbs to the top of a red maple, bites off a seed-laden twig and carries it to a lower limb—a feast of wings.
*
The Morning Porch will be on hiatus until September.
5/2/2017
Every pit in the porch floor’s paint is stained with pollen. A small samara helicopters past, too young to sprout but not too young to fly.
4/11/2017
Red maple trees blossom on their own schedules. The branches I watched the moon slip through like a slow fish last night are now ablaze.
3/30/2017
Dismal and cold, like a November day—except for the daffodils, the field sparrow’s rising trill, the red maple blossoms about to burst.
10/21/2016
After last night’s storm, all the birches and maples at the woods’ edge have lost their bright leaves, the oaks beyond still a sombre green.
9/30/2016
A steady shimmer of rain. At the woods’ edge, the first fall fashions have arrived, two maples trading their faded green for salmon.
8/21/2016
Rain. A squirrel crouches atop a maple burl, gray fur almost invisible against the gray bark, curled tail like a snake poised to strike.