A slow snowfall that never quite quits as I sit enjoying the balmy temperature—just seven degrees below freezing!—and the continuing, slow-motion courtship of the squirrels.
February 3,
A fresh half-inch of snow, and the ground’s as white as the sky again. From over the ridge, the roar of a Monday morning. A blue jay jeers.
Cold and still. Just as the half-moon‘s light begins to fade, a screech owl trills from the pines, as if to prolong the night.
-12C with a wind. Which one of those small pink clouds is responsible for these snowflakes? My oil furnace trembles under the house like a wounded animal.
Cold but not freezing mizzle. Two pileated woodpeckers work the woods’ edge, tilting their heads to the side between taps. A flock of juncos.
This is winter as I remember it from my childhood: more than a foot of drifting snow at 20°F. The Carolina wren is singing under the house.
Sunny and warm. The snow is reduced to patches in the woods. In front of the house, a Carolina wren shrieks abuse at my brother the birder.
Patches of bare yard dug up by deer. Patches of blue sky which the sun now and then pops through. The drip drip of meltwater from the roof.
Silence broken only by the wind for many minutes, until the fire alarm goes off in town: once, twice, three times rising from moan to wail.
A long log has slid down so that it rests like a seesaw on the top of the road bank. Tree shadows on the snow darken and grow faint again.
Birds flutter back and forth across the yard to drink the dark water of the spring. The frigid air glitters with scattered snowflakes.
It’s snowing; the bergamot heads wear new, conical caps. A mourning dove flies past the porch on nearly silent wings, headed for the pines.
A squirrel leaps through the snow-laden lilac up by the other house, chasing the juncos. Their high, tinny alarm-calls sound like laughter.
Is it overcast or sunny, warm or cold? I don’t even notice. The line crew is back, and they’ve chainsawed the top off a dwarf pear tree.