A small plane with a loud motor is the only thing in the sky besides the sun. In its wake, the distant cooing of a dove. I notice that the dead heads now outnumber the living in my iris patch.
Plummer’s Hollow
With the forest in full leaf, I have to wait for the sun as it glistens in the treetops, stirred by a breeze and the periodical outpourings of an oriole.
Bright sun and cedar waxwings whistling in the top of the tall black locust at the woods’ edge, which I see has finally almost leafed out.
The third cystal-clear, cool morning in a row. I block the sun with my hand to watch illuminated grains of dust and pollen stream past in the breeze. A silent hen turkey crosses the road, intent on breakfast.
Another perfect morning, the air still so clear I can follow the progress of sunlit gnats on the other side of the yard. A pileated woodpecker drums a quarter mile away. A vireo says “vireo” once and stops.
A cold front that began blowing in just before dawn has brought crystal clarity not just to the air but seemingly also to each bird call. Two wood thrushes tangle at the woods’ edge and retreat, each singing short phrases as if uncertain how their whole song goes.
Light rain. A large bumblebee buzzes past. The phoebe keeps making his sorties from the ring of old fencing around a volunteer red oak seedling, which no doubt appreciates the extra fertilizer.
Sun through thin clouds. A female cardinal foraging under the lilac picks up a twig, examines it, and sets it down again. Through the lilac limbs I spot the long legs of a deer picking her way across the road bank.
After hard rain in the night, the creek is high and babbles incoherently. The red squirrel runs past my feet with growing confidence in my harmlessness, only its ears poking up above the railing that separates us.
Rain tapers off by mid-morning, each iris leaf laden with shining encapsulations of the white sky. A small dinosaur known as a great-crested flycatcher calls at the woods’ edge.
A downpour tapers into hard rain and I can hear the birds again. Whatever the cerulean warbler might be asking, he doesn’t seem satisfied with a redstart’s insistent response.
Overcast and cool. In the yard below the porch, a scattering of white dewberry blossoms that I take for bird droppings at first, with phoebes flying back and forth from a nest somewhere close by that I have yet to find.
Almost all the local marmots appear within the space of a minute: a groundhog pokes its head up beside the porch, a chipmunk is chased out of the black walnut tree beside the road by a gray squirrel, and a red squirrel scolds from the springhouse.
Neither too cool nor too warm, with clouds yet to find the sun. The irises are at their peak of blooming in my front garden, and at the woods’ edge where several yellow ones survive as relics from an era of moved lawns and decorative fences fifty years ago.