Sunlight shimmers on the fur of a squirrel chiseling the shell of a disinterred nut, the morning coolness slowly giving way to heat.
Dave Bonta
Breezy and warm. Half of the leaves on the big tulip tree at the woods’ edge have turned yellow from the drought, and are beginning to fall. A deer coughs by the springhouse.
In the early morning coolness, a soft thunder of deer hooves up in the woods. From overhead, the calls of purple martins already on the wing.
Cool with murky, cloud-mediated sunlight. A hummingbird perches on a walnut branch for thirty seconds, head swiveling all about.
Crystal-clear and cool. A Cooper’s hawk calls from a sunlit limb at the woods’ edge—a sound I haven’t heard since early spring.
Here and there, the bracken in my yard is beginning to turn yellow. A hummingbird buzzes past, pausing to inspect several garlic heads.
Cool and clear. A pair of bindweed blossoms have opened on a fence post like microwave transmitters. A tiny patch of fog shelters from the sun in the lowest part of the meadow.
Every morning, more soapwort blossoms, and the raspberry canes are stretching into new territory. A harvestman stalks across my gray wasteland of a porch.
Clear and blessedly cool as sunlight floods the treetops. A distant siren. The incessant chatter of goldfinches.
Breezy and a bit less humid. A low buzz below the porch, where orange jewelweed attracts a ruby-throated hummingbird. A low rumble from my own stomach.
Humid and still, with clouds trailing low into the treetops—a typical morning in the tropics. The scolding and begging sounds of birds with fledglings.
Overcast and very humid. The big dial thermometer behind me on the wall is buzzing loudly. A minute later, a mud dauber wasp emerges.
A deer moves through the sunrise meadow, head and ears visible above the weeds. The furious chittering of a small flock of goldfinches swirling past.
The garlic heads in my yard give pause: a crowd of inverted commas, punctuating wildly. A goldfinch drops by to strip the seeds from an old weed stalk.