Botanically speaking, I’m sitting in Europe, staring at the New World. Over there it’s still mostly brown, and the birds sing more quietly.
April 2008
4/29/2008
Cold. A chipmunk’s steady tick. When I go back in, a half-dozen cherry petals precede me—random dance steps on the cherry-stained floor.
4/28/2008
Morning like a tinted photo. Wood thrush song, the susurration of rain, a greenish-yellow haze of oak blossoms merging with the clouds.
4/27/2008
Overcast and cold. The porch and yard are aglow with cherry blossoms, blown down by yesterday’s storms. A catbird mews from the springhouse.
4/26/2008
Cherry blossoms are falling—an early-morning bumblebee. Dressed for a funeral, I sit listening to the first wood thrushes of the year.
4/25/2008
Black cherries leaf out before flowering, but this morning I notice three white spots in the one across the road: budding caterpillar tents.
4/24/2008
I dreamed of a late snow and woke to find the earliest miniature yellow daffodils shriveled, and a new clump of white ones in full bloom.
4/23/2008
A male starling—a rarity here—lands among the cherry blossoms, iridescent black feathers speckled with white. He gargles musically.
4/22/2008
In the half-light, the faint crackling sound of a deer eating a rose bush. A lone Canada goose flies over, honking enough for a whole flock.
4/21/2008
Shrill chirps of a truck going in reverse. Under a lowering sky, daylight seeps from the jagged blaze of forsythia at the edge of the woods.
4/20/2008
Now that I know there are bears about, every snapping twig gets my attention. The cherry tree’s pink with swollen buds. A rumble of thunder.
4/19/2008
Over the dawn fusillade of woodpeckers, I hear the distant gobbles of a turkey. Five deer graze below the house. The doves make moan.
4/18/2008
Still cloudless, but the light lacks the crystal-clarity of previous mornings. Juncos all a-twitter, perhaps feeling the pull of the north.
4/17/2008
Fresh from their beds, two deer come out of the woods and stand blinking at the new green grass. One scratches her belly with a hind foot.