Cold and clear, autumnal weather continues, with a heavy inversion layer that makes the interstate sound as if it’s just above the barn. Dew drips from the roof.
Dave Bonta
Cool and clear with a breeze in the treetops, glossy oak leaves scintillating in the sun. A distant crow is trying to raise a ruckus, but no one joins in.
Too cold for all but one hardy field cricket. In the meadow, the half-grown twin fawns have a go at their mother’s milk, one on each side. A small flock of geese go over, bugling.
Clear and cool. One minute before sunrise, a long-tailed weasel appears at the end of the porch with a meadow vole dangling from her mouth, sees me, and disappears back into the weeds. I catch one more glimpse of a reddish-brown shadow crossing the driveway.
Overcast and quiet. A doe and two fawns melt into the woods when I come out. In the meadow, this morning’s bindweed trumpets are already vibrating with bumblebees.
The slow creak of a field cricket like a rusty winch for the sunrise. In the dying lilac I spot new mile-a-minute vines.
Cool and clearing. Dew drips from the porch roof onto the orange jewelweed, which this morning for the first time receives no visits from a hummingbird.
Gray skies. A sheen of moisture on everything. Somewhere up in the woods, a tree lets go of a dead limb. I lock eyes with the hummingbird hovering a foot from my nose.
Rain starts at sunrise and tapers off a half hour later. In its wake: phoebe, pewee, goldfinch, Carolina wren. A cedar waxwing’s whistle.
Heavily overcast and quiet, except for the steady trill of tree crickets and a distant vireo. A catbird rustles in the silky dogwood, gorging on the deep-blue drupes.
Breezy and cool. The white lilac, with at least 75% of its leaves dead from disease, is bizarrely in blossom again, with at least five full-sized clusters, white as flags signalling surrender.
An autumnal sunrise heralded by crickets. I search the bracken patch for any two fronds in the same shade of green, yellow, or brown.
In the wake of a quick hummingbird with her elegant wand, a bumblebee continues to work the jewelweed, clambering up into each orange throat.
Half a moon alone in the sky. A silent catbird flies into the half-dead lilac. Off through the forest, blinding fragments of the sun.