A couple inches of snow plastered to the porch and the eastern sides of trees. I can just make out a cardinal’s cheer, cheer above the bitter wind.
Damp, overcast and cool. The pussy willow I planted two years ago is in its glory, gray catkins cottony with droplets of water. A small cloud forms in the meadow behind the barn and drifts up toward the ridge.
Mackerel sky like a wrinkled brow. The spring is still singing about the last rain. The phoebe who called at sunrise flicks his tail.
Brick-red clouds barely move as a relentless wind rummages through the trees and shrubs on the ridgeside. A thin slice of moon gets lost among tossing limbs.
A fur of hoarfrost that lingers long after the daily woodpecker drum circle has broken up. A raven croaks in answer to a crow, under a hospital-white sky.
Cold and gray at mid-morning. I look up from my book to spot a brown creeper inching up a tree trunk at the woods’ edge. An especially mournful train horn echoes through the hollow.
Warm and damp. A rain shower passes through while I scroll the headlines. A tufted titmouse turns up the volume on his spring song.
Crystal-clear sunrise, with a bluebird warbling by the barn. A downy woodpecker at the woods’ edge has found the perfect tenor-tuned snag to rattle, in response to a distant pileated woodpecker’s thunder.
Cool and nearly clear, save for a couple scraps of cloud to catch the sunrise and color up like old leaves. The distant fluting of geese is just audible over the whine of Monday morning traffic.
We may have lost an hour from our phones, but at least the nukes haven’t started flying yet. The half moon sets. A few drops of rain darken the sidewalk. I am regarded gravely by a red squirrel.
Thick fog alive with robin and red-winged blackbird song. The spring gurgles under the yard. The wingbeats of a crow pass overhead.
Foggy and warm. Two nuthatches at the woods’ edge tangle in mid-air, tumbling a dozen feet before retreating to separate tree trunks. Near the top of the big tulip tree, a gray squirrel is leaping from limb to limb.
A mid-morning break in the rain. A red-winged blackbird calls once as the fog retreats to the ridgetop. Robins tut-tut. An altercation breaks out among the red-bellied woodpeckers.
In thick fog, the bright flesh of lilac and tulip tree limbs barked by squirrels for their nests. The last few patches of snow look as bedraggled as old bandages.