Sun through a scrim of cirrus. The hillside ticks with chipmunks. Two white-breasted nuthatches call back and forth at the woods’ edge.
Plummer’s Hollow
September 3, 2025
Snakeroot flower heads are beginning to open, white as the cows’ milk that they’re said to poison. A sunbeam reaching the porch shows me the shape of my breath.
September 2, 2025
Sun floods the treetops. I sneeze so loudly it sets off the neighbor’s dog, a quarter-mile away. The scrabble of claws from a high-speed red squirrel chase.
September 1, 2025
Chickadee scold-calls join an agitated red squirrel above the springhouse. Nothing stirs in the deep weeds. The sun burrows into a cloud.
August 31, 2025
Crystal-clear and cool at mid-morning, the Sunday silence only broken by a chipmunk’s metronome and the distant rumble of a train. In a patch of sun, a cricket picks up where he left off.
August 30, 2025
An hour before sunrise, in the silence before weekend traffic begins, a barred owl’s “Who cooks for you all?” followed by a screech owl’s trill. Half an hour later, the soft notes of a migrant thrush.
August 29, 2025
Cloudy and damp at sunrise. Traffic is a distant rumble; one tree cricket trills. When I next look up from my book, the sky is nearly clear.
August 28, 2025
Cold and clear, autumnal weather continues, with a heavy inversion layer that makes the interstate sound as if it’s just above the barn. Dew drips from the roof.
August 27, 2025
Cool and clear with a breeze in the treetops, glossy oak leaves scintillating in the sun. A distant crow is trying to raise a ruckus, but no one joins in.
August 26, 2025
Too cold for all but one hardy field cricket. In the meadow, the half-grown twin fawns have a go at their mother’s milk, one on each side. A small flock of geese go over, bugling.
August 25, 2025
Clear and cool. One minute before sunrise, a long-tailed weasel appears at the end of the porch with a meadow vole dangling from her mouth, sees me, and disappears back into the weeds. I catch one more glimpse of a reddish-brown shadow crossing the driveway.
August 24, 2025
Overcast and quiet. A doe and two fawns melt into the woods when I come out. In the meadow, this morning’s bindweed trumpets are already vibrating with bumblebees.
August 23, 2025
The slow creak of a field cricket like a rusty winch for the sunrise. In the dying lilac I spot new mile-a-minute vines.
August 22, 2025
Cool and clearing. Dew drips from the porch roof onto the orange jewelweed, which this morning for the first time receives no visits from a hummingbird.