Hard rain for less than a minute followed by an hour of dripping, accompanied by a cricket chorus. Pale soapwort flowers glow in the sun.
Plummer’s Hollow
Sunrise. A deer grazes at the woods’ edge. A phoebe perches beside her and makes repeated sorties over her back, snapping up the deerflies.
The wild garlic has all gone to seed, heads bowed with the weight of their descendants. A tiny ichneumon patrols the porch, wings a-quiver.
Overcast and cool. The irregular chirps of a cricket in the tall grass. A Canada goose flying over the ridge all alone honks twice.
Fog glowing sunrise-orange. Sound is out of the east: traffic, freight trains, the crusher at the quarry. A chickadee sings both his songs.
Sun in the treetops and a raven’s hollow, metallic croak. A fly buzzes through the porch without slowing down.
Yellow walnut leaflets come loose and flutter down in the slightest breeze, infiltrating for a few moments the confederacy of butterflies.
The rain begins just after mid-morning, slowly building in intensity. I watch as the dull green pelage of the world turns glossy again.
Bright sun after last night’s long-awaited rain. A chipmunk races down the road with cheek pouches bulging. A wood pewee’s melancholy call.
The drought forces plants into triage: the big tulip tree is turning yellow from the inside out; perennials are dying from the bottom up.
Two chipmunks in the woods locked in a rap battle fall in and out of sync. The chipmunk in the garden listens from atop the wall.
A hummingbird buzzes below the porch, looking for the touch-me-nots that the deer have eaten. Fly on my shoe, is it everything you’d hoped?
Through thinning clouds, the mid-morning sun’s dull glow. Below in the woods, leaves and branches beaded with moisture begin to glisten.
Cool and clear. A so-called white admiral butterfly lands on the other chair, with all the black and electric blue allure of a velvet Elvis.