When I adjust my chair, a stab of pain at the base of my middle finger: a yellow jacket, equally alarmed by the encounter, abdomen pulsing.
July 2021
7/30/2021
Breezy and cool. A female hummingbird zooms back and forth between the bergamot patch and the hillside treetops already aglow in the sun.
7/29/2021
A brief glimpse of sun through the mist and rain-soaked leaves. Then back to the humdrum of pewee and pileated woodpecker.
7/28/2021
This year for the first time deer have not eaten all the bracken in my yard. One frond is already yellowing like the skeleton of some unlikely fish.
7/27/2021
Cool beginning to a hot day. I can’t stop watching the hummingbird sphinx moths, their retractable drinking straws as quick as thought.
7/26/2021
5:15. The moon through thin clouds. A whip-poor-will’s distant chant. 9:15. The sun through thin clouds. A hummingbird’s mid-air defecation.
7/25/2021
The sun feels as if it has no business being out on such a quiet morning. A towhee sings a truncated version of his song: just “Your tea!”
7/24/2021
Mid-morning, and a wood thrush lands in the walnut tree next to the driveway to sing a few bars. A net-winged beetle flies past.
7/23/2021
A large native bee lands on a porch column to groom her antennae. A black ant races back and forth brandishing a dead ant like a flag.
7/22/2021
Goldfinches go on chittering the entire time I sit outside, poring over a trail map. One hummingbird sphinx moth works the bergamot.
7/21/2021
A few drops of rain. A gnatcatcher fluttering up from the weeds to a walnut tree swerves to—I assume—catch a gnat.
7/20/2021
5:02. Wood pewee. The first bird call of dawn, or insomnia’s last hurrah? Two minutes later, the chorus starts up.
7/19/2021
Cool morning. A red-spotted purple butterfly drops by the bergamot patch just to sunbathe, sitting motionless like a black flower.
7/17/2021
The sun comes out and with it a hummingbird, unfazed by the presence of visitors, including a three-year-old boy gleefully destroying an old log.