Mostly overcast and quiet, apart from the wind. A squirrel with an acorn in her mouth pauses for a split second at the end of a branch, then leaps.
Plummer’s Hollow
Overcast; the smell of rain. Cattail leaves rattle faintly. A few tiny patches of snow linger in the tall grass.
A close shot echoes off the ridge—it’s the opening day of regular firearms deer season. The sun moves slowly through the trees, dimming, blazing.
Warm rain. The snow has shrunk to a few scrofulous patches in the woods. Half an hour before sunrise, a bluebird is singing.
The sun finally clears the ridgetop at 8:00. A crow at the compost has an exchange with a raven high overhead: caw caw caw ARK ARK ARK etc.
I look up from my phone: another perfect day. Tree shadows on the snow stretch from the woods’ edge to the porch. Doves flutter up on sonorous wings.
One last meteor leaves a faint streak in the dawn sky. That dark disc rising through the trees has a shining husk—the old moon.
Clear, cold (13F/-10C) and very quiet. Foraging deer have scraped a bare patch in the snow. A sliver of moon slips through the treetops.
As cold as yesterday but with orange-bellied clouds and a wind. A tulip tree seed helicopters into the yard and rises up over the house.
The wind dropped in the night—and so did the mercury. It’s quiet. A squirrel chisels open a walnut. The cold creeps in through layers of clothing.
January weather, blustery and cold—and just as in January, two gray squirrels play amorous hide-and-seek on the trunk of the big tulip poplar.
-3C/27F with a wind. A hunter’s pickup rumbles past. A flock of small birds flies in a tight, silent cluster over the treetops.
First snowfall like a goose-down quilt. How happy the white-footed mice must be, thinking it gives protection against the owls.
Heavy frost in the yard. I scuttle about preparing for a scheduled seven-hour power outage that never comes. My tea grows cold.