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.
Year: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
-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.
First snowfall like a goose-down quilt. How happy the white-footed mice must be, thinking it gives protection against the owls.
Heavy frost in the yard. I scuttle about preparing for a scheduled seven-hour power outage that never comes. My tea grows cold.
Heavy cloud cover. A gray squirrel chiseling open a walnut squats on a low branch with its tail curled over its head for warmth.
Snowflakes floating down from a patchy sky, where the third-quarter moon appears and disappears. The distant fluting of geese.
A lull in the rains. The transition from a watercolor world to pencil-brown and charcoal-gray is nearly complete.
Steady drumming of rain on the porch roof. Dark trunks disappearing into fog. A classic November day.
A flock of juncos at the woods’ edge, between me and the sun: shining wings against dark trunks, a blinding quiver of rays.