A pause between showers. The thud of a walnut dropped by a squirrel. A housefly circles the porch. The rain starts back up.
August 2024
8/16/2024
The sun in fragments through the trees behind the old dead maple, which has a distinctly joyous appearance now that it’s shed its top half.
8/15/2024
Cool and still, with sunlight at half strength due to atmospheric haze—smoke from Canada’s burning forests. A wood pewee’s bluesy melisma.
8/14/2024
Cool and clear at sunrise. A yellow walnut leaf rests on the end table instead of a book. The slow motor of a bumblebee.
8/13/2024
A meteor streaks the dawn sky—a fast, yellow brushstroke. From over the ridge, the quarry’s dull grind. The first, faint twittering from the meadow.
8/12/2024
Clear and cold, with sun in the treetops. A pileated woodpecker in the yard lets loose with a cackle, prompting an immediate reply from off in the distance.
8/11/2024
Cold and still at sunrise. A hummingbird zooms past, pausing over a snakeroot that is almost in bloom.
8/10/2024
An autumnal sunrise, with crisp air and the creek full of voices, bracken browning in the yard, and the walnut leaves experimenting with carotenoids.
8/9/2024
Steady rain with a bit of a breeze—the remains of a hurricane that got the wind knocked out of her and lost her eye. At 7:39 the Carolina wren finally pipes up.
8/8/2024
Drizzle. A family of wrens make the sprawling old lilac sing and shimmy.
8/7/2024
Rain at dawn, tapering off by sunrise. Everything looks drenched. From behind the house, an indigo bunting’s cascade of notes.
8/6/2024
Nearly silent at sunrise, except for the field crickets playing their only hit: so much autumn and melancholy in that raspy metronome.
8/5/2024
Clear at sunrise, and cool enough that the crickets are still. I notice the big tulip tree at the woods’ edge has shed all its drought-stressed leaves and is green again.
8/4/2024
Partly cloudy and cool at sunrise, with 97% humidity and very little noise from—I’m guessing—valleys full of fog. A single-engine plane fades into the distance.