Cold and clear, autumnal weather continues, with a heavy inversion layer that makes the interstate sound as if it’s just above the barn. Dew drips from the roof.
August 28, 2024
Warm and humid, with a sickle moon high overhead. I battle mosquitos in between reading about eastern equine encephalitis on my phone.
August 28, 2023
Gray rain clouds thickening towards 8:00. It’s very still; long moments go by without a single bird call. A beetle finds its way to the butterfly weed.
August 28, 2021
The fog slowly lifts, except where it’s been trapped by funnel spider webs. The cardinal’s cheer seems a bit misplaced.
August 28, 2016
A warm morning, and all I hear are the birds of winter: chickadee, nuthatch, pileated woodpecker. A dead cranefly dangles from a spiderweb.
August 28, 2015
The alarm snorts of deer down-hollow give way to the higher-pitched snorting of a fawn in the field. Whatever it is, it’s heading southwest.
August 28, 2014
A cicada starts his electric saw and stops. It’s too cold for cicadas. The sky’s a deep blue. A walnut leaf curled like a boat floats down.
August 28, 2013
Nothing but the sound of rain—or rather, the sound of everything being struck by the rain. A robber fly zigzags into the woods.
August 28, 2012
Cool and clear except for a few scraps of cloud and a pair of ravens high overhead, their hollow, metallic croaks like steampunk crows.
August 28, 2011
A restless wind turns over leaves and passes through the house, as if searching for something it can’t find so far from the tropics.
August 28, 2010
Cloudless at sunrise except for my puffs of breath. A junco with bright new plumage flies out of the woods and veers past my face, chirping.
August 28, 2009
Another overcast morning, with wind and the sound of trucks out of the east. Two thrushes and a gnatcatcher move silently through the lilac.
August 28, 2008
Steady drizzle after three weeks of drought. The quiet, continuous insect trill in the grass sounds the way I feel—however that may be.