Rain-slick trees green with lichen dance in a puddle’s punctuated sky.
November 2022
11/29/2022
Heavily overcast at sunrise; only the ground glows a faint pink, thick with rain-slick leaves. A screech owl trills.
11/28/2022
Mostly overcast and quiet, apart from the wind. A squirrel with an acorn in her mouth pauses for a split second at the end of a branch, then leaps.
11/27/2022
Overcast; the smell of rain. Cattail leaves rattle faintly. A few tiny patches of snow linger in the tall grass.
11/26/2022
A close shot echoes off the ridge—it’s the opening day of regular firearms deer season. The sun moves slowly through the trees, dimming, blazing.
11/25/2022
Warm rain. The snow has shrunk to a few scrofulous patches in the woods. Half an hour before sunrise, a bluebird is singing.
11/24/2022
The sun finally clears the ridgetop at 8:00. A crow at the compost has an exchange with a raven high overhead: caw caw caw ARK ARK ARK etc.
11/23/2022
I look up from my phone: another perfect day. Tree shadows on the snow stretch from the woods’ edge to the porch. Doves flutter up on sonorous wings.
11/22/2022
One last meteor leaves a faint streak in the dawn sky. That dark disc rising through the trees has a shining husk—the old moon.
11/21/2022
Clear, cold (13F/-10C) and very quiet. Foraging deer have scraped a bare patch in the snow. A sliver of moon slips through the treetops.
11/20/2022
As cold as yesterday but with orange-bellied clouds and a wind. A tulip tree seed helicopters into the yard and rises up over the house.
11/19/2022
The wind dropped in the night—and so did the mercury. It’s quiet. A squirrel chisels open a walnut. The cold creeps in through layers of clothing.
11/18/2022
January weather, blustery and cold—and just as in January, two gray squirrels play amorous hide-and-seek on the trunk of the big tulip poplar.
11/17/2022
-3C/27F with a wind. A hunter’s pickup rumbles past. A flock of small birds flies in a tight, silent cluster over the treetops.