Three inches of sticky snow have turned the trees white and intricate, with many moving parts: sparrows, robins, a blackbird’s creak.
March 2011
3/30/2011
Overcast. A train whistle coming from the wrong direction. The resident naturalist stops at the corner of the wall, gets out her hand lens.
3/29/2011
A pair of ducks fly silently through the trees: the mallards who return every spring to nest on the mountain, a mile from the nearest pond.
3/28/2011
A little less cold, a little less clear as we inch toward the warm mud of April. The cardinal pays her morning visit to her glassy rival.
3/27/2011
The rapid scrabble of claws on bark, that waterfall sound. Three chasing squirrels spiral down the big locust like an animated barber pole.
3/26/2011
Clear and bracing, like a shot of vodka. The thirteen cattail heads beside the springhouse sway gently in the dawn light.
3/25/2011
Heavy frost, and the bare dirt in the garden has crystallized into icy turrets. Motes of snow float past, backlit by the sun. Robin song.
3/24/2011
A thin powder glazes all the logs and fallen limbs—white ships on a brown sea. The high-pitched whistles of waxwings passing overhead.
3/23/2011
Cold and dawn-dark at 8:30. The ridge disappears into cloud, allowing me to imagine real mountains—a fastness far from anything but rain.
3/22/2011
A turkey gobbles up in the corner of the field, and five seconds later, a turkey vulture soars into view. The sky is an implacable white.
3/21/2011
Cold, gray and rainy. I’m wearing my spring coat, but it could be November, except for the pussy willow catkins—those glimmering furs.
3/20/2011
Cold and quiet. Two phoebes are refurbishing the nest under the springhouse eaves, going to the stream and returning with beaks full of mud.
3/19/2011
Colder this morning, and no sign of the phoebes that came back yesterday. A robin sings and falls silent. The sun comes out, goes in.
3/18/2011
Cloudy and warm. A robin sings in the yard, garrulous as an unmarried uncle. Red-bellied woodpeckers leapfrog each other on a tree trunk.