Under a clearing sky, nuthatch and vireo still claim and declaim. A black cherry tree, having dispensed its fruit, is turning a dull orange.
Plummer’s Hollow
At 8:15 the sun almost comes out. Half an hour later, it’s still almost out. My faint shadow gives up after the feet.
Clear and cold. A squirrel joins the sun at the top of a scarlet oak Dad and I planted 25 years ago, now laden with acorns.
First day of a dry high. Sunlight seeping down the trees. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the cicadas have started up.
Clouds gravid with rain at sunrise. A wood thrush calls quietly. In the top of the tallest oak, a squirrel’s silhouette begins its descent.
Overcast with a shimmer of light rain. A red-eyed vireo still calls at the woods’ edge. The thud of a black walnut onto a roof.
Sun through a scrim of cloud. The first white snakeroot is in bloom. A Linne’s cicada rattles like a bad engine.
Half an hour after sunrise, a lawnmower motor in the sky: the curved sail of an ultralight glowing in the sun, heading south.
Crystal-clear, with leaves still wet from rain: I carry a chair up into the woods, luxuriate in the shimmering green and gold.
The sun finally struggles out by midmorning. Rain-dampened vegetation glistens like a salamander’s skin.
Drizzle thickening now and then into proper rain. The bracken in my yard glows in all the colors of decline and fall.
The third autumnal morning in a row, with clouds introducing a more melancholy note: nesting time is over, the sky road calls…
45F/7C at sunrise. I carry a chair up into the woods, watch sunlight seep down the oaks with color commentary by a red-eyed vireo.
Clear, cold, and quiet except for the wren. A breeze through the treetops: trembling leaves anointed by the sun.