Among the faded early daffodils, one white narcissus blooms in the round flower bed with its broken statue of a dog, still holding point.
Plummer’s Hollow
Sun through thin cloud. A crow chases a raven through the treetops, dive-bombing it again and again. The raven’s furious croaks.
Bright and warm. A squirrel in the lilac drops to the ground for a quick roll, as if scratching an itch. A fat fly moves into the shade.
Did it really rain hard last night, or did I dream that? The creek seems no louder. High against the clouds, a small hawk flaps and circles.
Another cold, overcast day. Daffodils and forsythia begin to grate with their unrelenting yellows. Even the Carolina wren sounds querulous.
A classic onion snow, still falling fast when I come out: big wet clumps of flakes weighing down the daffodils, turning the hillside white.
Sunny and cold. The peony sprouts are at that stage of development where it’s hard not to see them as little red hands—waving, drowning.
Sunny and cold. The intense green of the lilac’s new leaves against the brown woods moves me almost to tears. A blue-headed vireo sings.
Intermittent showers after a night of storms. A dead oak leaf stands upright among the daffodils like someone at the wrong party.
Faint sunlight. A gnatcatcher’s nasal notes against the background noise of field sparrows. My mother calls to come look at a dead mole.
Cloudy and cold. Two squirrels excavate nuts a foot apart in the yard, keeping a wary eye on each other. A red-bellied woodpecker trills.
High winds continue. The other white plastic stack chair suddenly turns, slides off the porch and topples into the fresh half-inch of snow.
Curtains of rain blow this way and that. The crack of branch. Bits of gray paper come flying loose from the old hornets’ nest under the eaves.
The silhouette of a small accipiter—doubtless one of the resident Cooper’s hawks—swift and silent as it disappears into the trees.