Another perfect morning. A hummingbird lifts off from the bergamot, tailed closely by a moth. The quiet, anxious calls of a titmouse.
Plummer’s Hollow
Clear and cold. A blue-headed vireo calls from a sun-drenched treetop in the yard, answered only by the resident wood pewee.
Cloudy and cool. Cricket trills and ticks are joined by chipmunk tocks. A tulip tree leaf sails in wide circles with its stem for a rudder.
The wind from a distant storm sends yellowed walnut leaves spinning to the ground. In the meadow, the first goldenrod blossoms are opening.
Overcast, cool and quiet. The muffled crows of the neighbor’s rooster, still inside the coop. A small, brown moth lands on my shoulder.
Workmen up at the other house: the whine of an annual cicada in the trees alternates with an actual electric saw.
A dragonfly with shimmering, banded wings and an electric blue abdomen lands on a garlic seed-head, falls still and nearly disappears.
Seeing the big maple silhouetted against the dawn sky, I notice for the first time it’s half dead. A clanking as the quarry comes to life.
Too warm for a coat, too cool for a t-shirt. And in the grass weighted down with dew, the murmur of crickets. It feels like autumn.
A red-spotted purple butterfly emerges into the glare like an emissary from the shadows. In the front garden, a burst of wren chatter.
Clear and cool, but in the woods, last night’s rain is still reaching the ground, drop by shining drop. A wood pewee’s eponymous drawl.
A cicada lies on its back on the porch, legs churning the air. I turn it over and the dog gives it a good, close reading with her nose.
The porch floor shining in the sun, a dragonfly comes in to inspect it, flying right under my propped-up legs. The dry whisper of its wings.
Below the porch, I notice a single orange jewelweed overlooked by the deer. The hummingbird zips right past it on her way to the garden.