Two degrees below freezing and crystal clear. I worry for the tender young leaves of the peonies, paused mid-unfurl—translucent pink commas.
Plummer’s Hollow
Snow showers: small flakes melting on contact with the ground. Only an old spiderweb on the porch preserves them, these ephemeral flies.
In the cold rain, a winter wren forages in the mud beside the creek, chirping excitedly and bobbing up and down on spring-loaded legs.
Deer follow their long-legged shadows through the trees. Three phoebes chase through the branches and three chipmunks through the leaf duff.
In a lull between showers, a squirrel re-buries a freshly disinterred walnut. Juncos sing as they forage, preparing for their journey north.
The stone wall chipmunk keeps sneaking onto the territory of the road bank chipmunk, then fleeing back across the yard—a striped blur.
The sun fades as the sky turns paler blue. I close my eyes to listen to the creek—after rain, like a room full of whispered conversations.
Overcast and cold. Goldfinches flit through the yard, one of them already in his summer molt: pace Frost, their first gold is green.
The sound of steady rain unmediated by leaves. Civilization is reduced to a distant rumble. Tree trunks break out in patches of lichen.
Dismal and cold, like a November day—except for the daffodils, the field sparrow’s rising trill, the red maple blossoms about to burst.
A pair of phoebes flutter under the porch eaves, see me and the dog and retreat to a nearby branch. The first daffodils nod in the breeze.
In the steady rain, a winter wren sings his summer song at the woods’ edge; on a log over the creek; in the heart of the gold-budded lilac.
Cold rain and fog. A flock of grackles wheels low over the house—the sudden waterfall sound of their wings all turning at once.
Colder than yesterday, but the last bones of snow still didn’t survive the night. A chipmunk takes fright, tail up like an exclamation mark.