From fresh green to dark green to yellow and brown, the bracken is in a perpetual state of resurrection. Two fawns rush past, tormented by flies.
Plummer’s Hollow
July 28, 2025
Clear and cool. A towhee calls in the distance. Yesterday’s last yellow flower atop the tall mullein stalk has gone out; nothing there now but the sun.
July 27, 2025
Fog rising into blue. Everything drips. A hummingbird sits on a small branch in a small walnut tree, head swiveling all about.
July 26, 2025
In the cool stillness, the snap of a phoebe’s bill on some unwary insect. The four-foot-tall aspen beside the driveway bends under the bird’s weight as he perches on its spindly tip.
July 25, 2025
A warm breeze abuzz with hummingbirds and mosquitoes. A red-eyed vireo sings a few notes and falls silent. Inside a hollow locust tree, something is beating.
July 24, 2025
Cool and humid. The crows are carrying on again, like one of those families who share their business with the entire Walmart. The top-heading garlic stalks in the yard have split their hoods to reveal what look like compound eyes.
July 23, 2025
Cool and clear. Sunlight floods the crown of the tall tulip tree, which releases one yellow leaf into the still air, rocking from side to side as it falls.
July 22, 2025
Cool as an autumn morning, with twittering goldfinches in lieu of yellow leaves. Just inside the woods’ edge, two deer chase back and forth, pausing for breath six feet apart.
July 21, 2025
Cool and clear at sunrise, with a sliver of moon like an open parenthesis for something left unsaid. A hummingbird drawn in by purple bergamot sips from the drab white soapwort instead.
July 20, 2025
A crescent moon above the ridge at dawn is lost in fog by sunrise. A hummingbird bothers the bergamot, and a wood thrush is singing as lustily as if it were still June.
July 19, 2025
Overcast and damp. A hummingbird visits the jewelweed growing in the drip line from the roof, which still drips from a shower at dawn. A wood thrush sings.
July 18, 2025
Dawn. I wake a wren roosting above the door. The cardinal is already singing—and off in the distance, another cardinal responds. They seem in general agreement.
July 17, 2025
Overcast at sunrise. Each breeze brings a brief shower from a midnight storm. A mosquito wallows in the long hair of my forearm.
July 16, 2025
White sun in a white sky crossed by crows. Twittering goldfinches have the mid-morning chorus mostly to themselves, aside from one dogged towhee.