Cold and crystal-clear. Sound is out of the east, where the quarry machines grind, giving the rising sun an industrial soundtrack.
Month: May 2024
Unseasonably cool. When the sun comes out, I can see that the breeze is freighted with bits of down and other plant parts—all the detritus of blooms and booms.
High drama in the trees behind the springhouse, where a red squirrel contends with the local grays. A jet with no contrail slips like a needle through the blue, its roar trailing far behind.
Breezy and cool—a distinctly autumnal feel, belied by the black walnut trees’ young leaves, not yet full size, light green against the darker forest behind them. My brother the birder hurries past, eyes darting all about.
Dawn: a blurry moon just above the trees losing its glow. The wood thrush’s ethereal song gives way to a red-eyed vireo sounding like a wind-up bird, going at twice normal speed.
The hollow is full of fog with nothing but blue sky above it—a green bowl of birdsong and parts unknown. The sun like a bright spider stretching and retracting her legs.
Another cool morning. The chipmunk who lives under the lilac races across the road, tail like the upright stem on a quarter note. The peonies’ pale fists are opening, one by one.
Sunlight through the trees slowly growing sharper as high clouds thin out. A shadow-play of two silent crows. A falling petal.
Rain easing off from a dawn storm. The peony buds look almost ready to open. A raincrow croons.
The sun finally clears the trees at 9:00. A bluebird and a phoebe call back and forth in the yard, an ovenbird and a red-eyed vireo talk over each other in the woods, and in the valley, traffic, a tractor, a train.
Cool and nearly clear, save for a wash of high-altitude murk. The tall tulip tree at the woods’ edge is shedding petals, leaves waving like ravers in the slightest breeze.
Fog lifts to reveal blue sky, the sun in the treetops. A scarlet tanager hurtles past the porch with a second in close pursuit. The morning’s first itch prickles the back of my hand.
Overcast and cool. A pair of love-struck squirrels appear to have designs on my house, climbing the red cedar, peering in the windows.
Rain and fog shut out all sounds from the valley; a gobbling turkey and a pair of pileated woodpeckers are the loudest things. A titmouse sheltering in the lilac shakes the rain from his wings.