A wet, white fur on the fallen elm limbs and the statue they destroyed. A squirrel scrambles up the snag and disappears into the den hole.
Month: October 2012
Calm. Sandy’s center must be close. The top half of the dead elm tree has blown down, breaking the back of the old dog statue.
Weather report, 11 a.m.: Light drizzle. Gusts of wind up to 3 MPH. The still-green lilac looks freakish now against the mostly bare trees.
In the cold rain, a squirrel sits on an elm limb with its back to the trunk working on a walnut, its tail folded over its head like a hood.
A walnut sits on the railing in its soggy, rotten husk like an obscene offering. Two distant fire sirens: when one peaks, the other troughs.
Gray sky, gray woods. The same stream-bank barberry that was the first thing to green up in April is now the last to glow a fiery orange.
The soft clatter of oak leaves on their way to the ground. Dull thumps as a pileated woodpecker excavates a hole, crest like a flaming axe.
Too hot for late October. A yellowjacket circles my pale face as if looking for a paper nest. A mantis lands upside-down beside the door.
A series of loud sneezes from the dead goldenrod at the woods’ edge where a deer must be bedded down. A junco forages in the stiltgrass.
A breeze carries leaves from the dark woods to spiral down into the sunlit yard. A deer feeds on the lilac—the only remaining greenery.
Cumulus clouds at two different heights: the lower ones move twice as fast. Lower still, a scattered flock of robins going the opposite way.
Two antlerless deer pass the porch ten minutes apart, each grunting anxiously. Gray-brown now, they almost vanish into the dead goldenrod.
The brackens in my yard have turned from brown to burgundy. High in a walnut tree, a squirrel checks every webworm tent for unfallen nuts.
Four crows around the houses are voicing loud displeasure at something or other. I hear bemusement in the croak of a raven high overhead.