Tent caterpillar webs billow, white as sails—still full of the dawn fog. Two nuthatches kvetch back and forth at the woods’ edge.
2012
August 20, 2012
9:40. The strange, pipe organ-like moan of a steam locomotive blowing the Plummer’s Hollow crossing raises the hair on the back of my neck.
August 19, 2012
I get up to pick the ripe berries on the spicebush in my garden. Allspice aroma wafts up from the red drupes as I pinch them off the twigs.
August 18, 2012
A hawk circles over the ridge, higher and higher, until it appears smaller and fainter than the white blood cells criss-crossing my retina.
August 17, 2012
A hummingbird sits on the tip of one of the dead cherry’s few remaining twigs, like a fat green leaf with the stem pointing the wrong way.
August 16, 2012
Red leaves in the yard—the red of spring rather than autumn. The multiflora rose, pruned once again by passing deer, struggles to re-leaf.
August 15, 2012
cricket cricket cricket cricket cricket cricket cricket cricket cricket cricket cricket cricket CROW CROW CROW cricket cricket cricket crick
August 14, 2012
A large praying mantis at the edge of the porch, near where I sit, turns its head to watch me with unblinking, space-alien eyes.
August 13, 2012
Another cool, Septemberish morning. A chipping sparrow lands on the garden walk beside the porch and gives me a quick, quizzical look.
August 12, 2012
Even hanging upside-down from a Canada thistle and stuffing her beak with thistledown, the goldfinch never stops chittering.
August 11, 2012
Another quiet morning as the songbirds go through their annual molt. Cicada. Yellow-billed cuckoo. Last night’s rain glistens on the grass.
August 10, 2012
A shimmer of rain. One of the lower branches on the big tulip tree has been stripped of bark, but its leaves haven’t gotten the news.
August 9, 2012
The first blooming tall goldenrod glows yellow at the woods’ edge. In a cherry tree, a fall webworm tent enshrouds a garland of dead leaves.
August 8, 2012
A half-grown fawn, no mother in sight, wanders through the foxtail millet and into the woods, its fading spots glimmering in the deep shade.