Non-stop noise from the indigo buntings. One of them drops into the deer-ravaged rosebush and flutters madly, subduing some luckless insect.
May 2013
5/16/2013
Sunny and hot. A small ichneumon wasp on the shady side of a column actually stops vibrating for a few seconds and is completely still.
5/15/2013
Clouds darken. The wind carries the sound of lawnmowers. When the rain starts, it feels like an unresolved chord finally returning home.
5/14/2013
From the herb bed, I hear the squeaks of a hummingbird sipping from the columbine. Then he’s in my face, gorget like a small red torch.
5/13/2013
A chickadee lands on the cherry snag and chitters till his mate emerges from the hole. He gives her a bit of food and they fly off together.
5/12/2013
The red porch floor is pocked with yellowish green pollen. In the garden, a red crabapple petal is plastered to a witch hazel leaf.
5/11/2013
I feel it before I see it: in the half-light, the intense green of new leaves. The sound of field sparrows, towhees, spring peepers, rain.
5/10/2013
The rattle of a chipping sparrow. The cypress spurge smells so sweet, I resolve not to pull it from my herb bed until it’s done blooming.
5/9/2013
When the mid-morning rain eases up, the phoebe comes out to hawk for gnats, and I hear the first wood thrush singing—those pure, sad notes.
5/8/2013
A catbird mews from within the crabapple’s scandalous maroon. It starts to rain. A chickadee carries a worm into its hole in the stump.
5/7/2013
A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, the same urgent, rising notes that woke me an hour earlier. But still no wood thrush.
5/5/2013
The leaves of the tall tulip tree at the wood’s edge are now as big as babies’ ears. A squirrel cries plaintively from its crown.
5/4/2013
Low clouds fly east to west. From above the road, the loud snap of a phoebe’s beak on the spot where some fly had been a moment before.
5/3/2013
In a soft light filtered by high clouds, trees framed by a fog of new leaves. After each burst of wren song, the goldfinch commentaries.