High drama in the trees behind the springhouse, where a red squirrel contends with the local grays. A jet with no contrail slips like a needle through the blue, its roar trailing far behind.
Plummer’s Hollow
May 28, 2024
Breezy and cool—a distinctly autumnal feel, belied by the black walnut trees’ young leaves, not yet full size, light green against the darker forest behind them. My brother the birder hurries past, eyes darting all about.
May 27, 2024
Dawn: a blurry moon just above the trees losing its glow. The wood thrush’s ethereal song gives way to a red-eyed vireo sounding like a wind-up bird, going at twice normal speed.
May 26, 2024
The hollow is full of fog with nothing but blue sky above it—a green bowl of birdsong and parts unknown. The sun like a bright spider stretching and retracting her legs.
May 25, 2024
Another cool morning. The chipmunk who lives under the lilac races across the road, tail like the upright stem on a quarter note. The peonies’ pale fists are opening, one by one.
May 24, 2024
Sunlight through the trees slowly growing sharper as high clouds thin out. A shadow-play of two silent crows. A falling petal.
May 23, 2024
Rain easing off from a dawn storm. The peony buds look almost ready to open. A raincrow croons.
May 22, 2024
The sun finally clears the trees at 9:00. A bluebird and a phoebe call back and forth in the yard, an ovenbird and a red-eyed vireo talk over each other in the woods, and in the valley, traffic, a tractor, a train.
May 21, 2024
Cool and nearly clear, save for a wash of high-altitude murk. The tall tulip tree at the woods’ edge is shedding petals, leaves waving like ravers in the slightest breeze.
May 20, 2024
Fog lifts to reveal blue sky, the sun in the treetops. A scarlet tanager hurtles past the porch with a second in close pursuit. The morning’s first itch prickles the back of my hand.
May 19, 2024
Overcast and cool. A pair of love-struck squirrels appear to have designs on my house, climbing the red cedar, peering in the windows.
May 18, 2024
Rain and fog shut out all sounds from the valley; a gobbling turkey and a pair of pileated woodpeckers are the loudest things. A titmouse sheltering in the lilac shakes the rain from his wings.
May 17, 2024
Overcast and cool. Water gurgles into the ground and gurgles out again, and half-way between, a meadow vole surfaces from the thatch, her dark fur a study in ceaseless motion.
May 16, 2024
Having risen late on the one sunny morning of the week, I watch a tiny, pale green grasshopper wander my trouser leg, its antennae sweeping the dark denim ahead.