Having risen late on the one sunny morning of the week, I watch a tiny, pale green grasshopper wander my trouser leg, its antennae sweeping the dark denim ahead.
May 16, 2023
Another deliciously cool dawn. A wood thrush on the far side of the yard sings a simplified, less ethereal version of their call—the result no doubt of having been raised too close to traffic or industrial noise.
May 16, 2022
Fog buzzing and thrumming with bird calls, filling in where half-sized leaves are still working toward the hegemony of green: pea soup indeed.
May 16, 2021
The catbirds are much more furtive now going into the barberry that hides their nest. Two cuckoos call up a bit of rain.
May 16, 2020
A brown thrasher’s jazz echoes off the barn. In the clear plastic hummingbird feeder, a lampyrid beetle takes a very long time to drown.
May 16, 2019
A scraggly-looking doe, still in her gray winter pelt, crosses the stream below the house, pausing to graze on a multiflora rose.
May 16, 2016
In the tall locusts still bare of leaves, the flaming orange of a Baltimore oriole—no, two orioles in a mad chase. The victor’s brassy song.
May 16, 2015
Both bluebirds land on top of the stump, look at me, and warble aggressively. In the lily-of-the-valley bed, the bells are fading to brown.
May 16, 2014
The porch floor is blotched with pollen. Through the bright-green new leaves, the last few dots of sky are still visible above the ridge.
*
I’m off to the U.K., so this will be my last update from the porch until mid-August.
Burglars are advised not to bother trekking all the way up Plummer’s Hollow, as I have nothing of value apart from my books.
May 16, 2013
Sunny and hot. A small ichneumon wasp on the shady side of a column actually stops vibrating for a few seconds and is completely still.
May 16, 2012
The air is so clear, I can see individual specks of pollen. In the field, the long grass sways under the restless wings of a female harrier.
May 16, 2010
At daybreak, a small deer leaps and twists like a bronco with an invisible rider, then careens through the purple haze of dame’s-rocket.
May 16, 2009
May 16, 2008
At 6:00, the sky grows dark again as a storm approaches. Wood thrushes start back up. The lilac’s white torches all point at the ground.