Out before sunrise, where the humidity has become visible: a thin fog through which I swim, leaving the porch for an early-morning hike to beat the heat.
Plummer’s Hollow
Cool, clear and humid at sunrise. I watch a crow family waking up on their roost in an oak, the fledglings softly begging from the adults, who stretch and scratch.
Up for moonset and sunrise—both hidden by clouds. The dark yard, punctuated by the apostrophes of top-heading garlic, has a crow for a rooster.
Overcast and cool. Up on the ridge, a Cooper’s hawk calls once—a workman’s sudden, colorful string of curses—and falls silent. A towhee comes out into the meadow to sing.
Cool, cloudy and humid. A paper wasp drinks rainwater from a spicebush leaf. In the front garden, hummingbirds circle the purple, mop-headed bergamot.
The plaintive cries of what sounds like a fledgling crow up in the woods accompany the awkward sorties of a fledgling phoebe, beak snapping on a missed insect. Blue sky appears.
A cool and humid sunrise, with the silence of a long holiday weekend continuing to linger. The buzz of a hummingbird. A firefly goes past with his unlit lantern.
Clear and cool at sunrise. In the holiday-morning silence, a worm-eating warbler’s dry rattle in the woods accompanies the catbird singing in the yard and field sparrows in the meadow. A crow. The rumble of a jet.
Out at dawn for the cardinal’s opening salvo and a mosquito nuzzling my neck. The twittering of goldfinches. An east-bound freight blows its horn.
Clear, cool, and dry at last. Shadows have sharp outlines; patches of sun in the woods or meadow glow like places apart. A small breeze inhabits the top of the tulip tree, paging through its leaves.
Overcast, humid and cool. A bang from the back roof—an aborted walnut. The sun comes out for a few seconds. One of the last 17-year cicadas falls silent again.
Overcast and cool. In the daylily patch at the base of the walnut tree next to the road, there’s a changing of the guard as yesterday’s trumpets go limp and today’s ease open, orange and buzzing.
Partly cloudy, humid and still. A hen turkey clucks once from the woods’ edge. I slap myself awake, killing mosquitoes.
Overcast and buggy, with the noise of a long-delayed tractor repair underway at the neighbor’s, and a blue jay transitioning from anxiety to alarm.