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 8, 2024
Drizzle. A family of wrens make the sprawling old lilac sing and shimmy.
August 8, 2023
Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.
August 8, 2022
Clear but with atmospheric haze, so the sunlight leaking down the trees looks murky behind the goldfinches’ purer yellow.
August 8, 2021
Walnut leaves have begun to yellow, as leaf miners turn the locust trees brown. A red-eyed vireo warbles on and on.
August 8, 2015
A dragonfly with shimmering, banded wings and an electric blue abdomen lands on a garlic seed-head, falls still and nearly disappears.
August 8, 2012
A half-grown fawn, no mother in sight, wanders through the foxtail millet and into the woods, its fading spots glimmering in the deep shade.
August 8, 2011
A honeybee conducts a slow inspection of the porch railing, including my boots. I’m pondering the secret cousinship of wrens and crickets.
August 8, 2010
Cool, clear and quiet—a silence that’s part Sunday and part molting season. The Canada thistles too are shedding white fur into the breeze.
August 8, 2009
Gone is the persistent “tweet?” of the breeding season: at first light, the towhee’s call falls like a declarative, flat and final.
August 8, 2008
At sunrise, a pair of screech owls trill back and forth, one high, one low, as orange-and-purple clouds race overhead.