Glancing up from a book about Papua New Guinea, I see a doe and fawn crossing the yard and passing pale as spirits between the dark trees.
Plummer’s Hollow
Two days ago, I spotted the first red branch of black gum. This morning, in the tops of locust saplings: that transcendent springtime green.
A hummingbird does a quick circuit of the bergamot, then zips across the road to check out the limp orange tubes from yesterday’s daylilies.
Unseen: a crash in the treetops, followed by a ripple of high-pitched squirrel alarm that travels hundreds of yards in a couple of seconds.
On the far side of the driveway, the heads of the garlic multitude have uncurled, and they stand with their long bills pointing at the sky.
A Carolina wren stops by and pours out fifteen seconds of pure exuberance—just enough to remind me how much I’ve been missing. (Stay! Nest!)
A squirrel descending the closest corner of the house spots me watching and freezes, then proceeds jerkily like a film going frame by frame.
Hazy but cool. A cranefly bumbles over the cherry tree on its too-long legs, its too-small wings, like a marionette with invisible strings.
A high-pitched, terrified bleat. Half a minute later, the alarm snorts of an adult deer. Sun in the treetops. The snorting goes on and on.
A phoebe darts and hovers, gleaning insects off the wet weeds. Yesterday, I watched a phoebe help feed four catbird fledglings in the lilac.
In the side garden, the first bergamot is in bloom, purple dreadlocks shooting from a dusty inflorescence and a necklace of purpled green.
The little wood satyr I first spotted yesterday flutters up from the side garden, yellow-rimmed eyespots like dim headlights in the fog.
Overcast and humid. It seems unusually quiet, and after ten minutes I realize why: no cicadas! See you in 2025, oh weird ones. Insha’Allah.
The yellowthroat’s witchedywitchedywitchedy woke me at dawn. Now he sits silent on a curved claw of dead elm, insouciant in his black mask.