Steady rain through the intense green of new leaves, softened by fog. A gray squirrel sits hunched over an acorn under the awning of its tail.
April 2023
4/29/2023
Thin fog full of goldfinch chatter and turkey gobbling. A rare red squirrel emerges from the woods and zips all around the springhouse.
4/28/2023
Gray skies at sunrise beginning to tap with fingers of rain on this leaf and that—their first real shower. The avian chorus gains a soft percussion.
4/26/2023
Cold and clear aside from some high-atmosphere haze, which gives the light a timeless feel as the sun climbs through a hillside of flowering oaks.
4/25/2023
Frost in the yard. How many tender young leaves will collapse and blacken at the sun’s touch? A goldfinch warbles in the treetops. A raven gargles.
4/24/2023
Three degrees below freezing, but no frost. The dawn chorus seems reduced in volume, though the towhees and one tom turkey aren’t holding back.
4/23/2023
Cool and damp at sunrise. A small cottontail grazes at the woods’ edge: a salad of tiny leaves. A gnatcatcher’s soft soliloquy.
4/22/2023
In the half-light, the first white blossoms on the old French lilac look like snow. When the whippoorwill pauses for breath, I can hear the first wood thrush’s ethereal song.
4/21/2023
Cool and clear at sunrise. A gobbler trailed by two hens parades up into the forest, making a half-turn each time he opens the dark fan of his tail.
4/20/2023
Hen turkey calling at sunrise like a rusty machine pleading for oil, the tom interrupting with his usual non sequitur. A squirrel noses the stump of a freshly felled locust.
4/19/2023
Below freezing at sunrise, but a breeze seems to have staved off frost. Will oak flowers survive? Will wildlife thrive or starve? So much depends on one or two degrees difference now.
4/18/2023
A cold and rainy dawn. The thermometer’s red pointer crosses the Centigrade zero—a null set. I say an atheist’s prayer for all the new leaves.
4/17/2023
Back to normal April at last: cool and damp and shining, the woods’ edge a haze of tiny leaves and catkins. The ancient bridal wreath bush is white again.
4/16/2023
Sun glimmering through fog as wild turkeys whine and gobble, mourning doves moan, and a red-winged blackbird sings in the marsh.