Mid-morning and the sun is just struggling free of clouds and/or smoke. A chicken cackles in the distance. Annual cicadas exchange raspy notes.
August 2025
August 7, 2025
Neither hot nor cold under a clouded-over sky that’s faintly blue, permitting sunshine but not shadows. The hummingbird circling my hung-out red bandanna appears to have developed a taste for my salt, tapping all over with her lightning-fast tongue.
August 6, 2025
Yesterday’s red bandanna, hung out to dry in the rafters, attracts first one, then two hummingbirds. Inevitably, they fight. The winner settles on the closest tree branch.
August 5, 2025
Thin, high clouds. The yellow smudge that is the sun rises to the tune of quarry trucks beeping backwards. I study the weeds where I saw a bear disappear ten hours earlier, just at dusk.
August 4, 2025
Clear, cold and still. I can’t stop gazing at the red oak seedling I found in the yard yesterday and immediately caged in a ring of deer fencing, its four jaunty leaves above a sea of invasive periwinkle.
August 3, 2025
Dawn. The thermometer has dropped to 50°F (10°C). Something small and dark disappears into the tall weeds beside the driveway, setting off first one, then the other Carolina wren. It never reemerges. The sun comes up.
August 2, 2025
Sunny and cold. The woods are quiet. A red-eyed vireo sings in the middle of the yard. A gray squirrel’s hawk alarm goes off.
August 1, 2025
Overcast and cool. At the edge of the cattail marsh, among the smartweed and tearthumb, I spot a lone stalk of purple loosestrife rocking gently in the breeze.