Bitter cold and overcast. After a bit of belly-grooming, the stone-wall chipmunk races across the yard to forage under the lilac, only to be chased off by another chipmunk. She returns to her spot atop the wall and sits motionless, staring off into space.
Dave Bonta
March 1, 2025
Sun and clouds and a turkey vulture rocking in the wind. Then the blue fissures close, and it’s another gray day.
February 28, 2025
A fresh dusting of snow: winter’s not done with us yet. But the chipmunk who lives in the stone wall next to the porch is up, poking around under the lilac, racing across the yard.
February 27, 2025
Hard rain at daybreak easing off into fog. The ground under the trees is still more white than brown. The voices in the creek have increased from a symposium to a convention.
February 26, 2025
A sky of pastel colors occasionally graced by a bleary sun. Strings of non-migrant, local Canada geese fly low over the trees, restless, their cries still full of elsewhere.
February 25, 2025
Heavily overcast with a steady drip of snowmelt. From one valley, the sound of trains; from the other, a killdeer. A snow goblin left by the plow topples over into the road.
February 24, 2025
Contrails fading to white after sunrise—toppled columns from a ruined temple. Three bugle notes from a lone goose. The dull roar of traffic.
February 23, 2025
Clear at dawn, with the bright crescent moon inching teeth-first through the treetops. A mourning dove plays a downbeat rooster.
February 22, 2025
The sun! A robin answers the Carolina wren as a pileated woodpecker hammers away at a hollow black walnut tree.
February 21, 2025
Gray skies and a bitter wind. Snowflakes keep finding the open book in my lap; I sweep them off with a glove before they can vanish into the ample whitespace surrounding the text.
February 20, 2025
An hour after sunrise and the squirrels are mostly back in their burrows. Weak sunlight on a snowfall fine as flour. A mourning dove calls.
February 19, 2025
Cold, thinly overcast, and very quiet. The spot where the sun must be glows like a yellow door among the ridgetop trees.
February 18, 2025
Deep cold at dawn. Icicles hanging from the eaves bend this way and that. The trees creak and groan. The chip, chip of a cardinal waking up.
February 17, 2025
The winds that buffeted the house all night have mostly retreated to the ridgetop—a distant roar. A few, yellow-bellied clouds add their scattered flakes to the windblown snow drifting atop the ice. I hear my mother on her back porch yelling at the squirrels.