A few patches of frost in the yard as the sun clears the ridgetop. Juncos move through the rambling old lilac, its last few leaves faded nearly to yellow.
Plummer’s Hollow
November 10, 2023
Overcast and quiet an hour before sunrise. Hunters’ headlamps move back and forth on the dark hillside like lost stars.
November 9, 2023
it starts raining just as I come out on the porch, completing the November trinity: cold, gray, and wet. Goldfinch chatter. The keening of truck tires on the interstate.
November 8, 2023
The sun clears the ridge and I’m blinded—the oaks are mostly bare now. Those that aren’t, glow red like a scattering of old barns.
November 7, 2023
Breezy and warm. With each gust of wind, a flotilla of leaves sets sail from the big tulip tree, as the sun ascends a ladder of clouds.
November 6, 2023
Sunrise glowing orange between the half-naked ridgetop oaks. The yard fills with small birds: sparrows, kinglets, the inevitable wren.
November 5, 2023
Overcast sunrise for the return to standard time. The restless footsteps of a buck below the house, carrying his rack of bare branches into the woods.
November 4, 2023
Thin clouds turn livid for the sunrise. A chickadee twitters. Two minutes later, we’re back to gloom.
November 3, 2023
On a cloudless, quiet mid-morning after a heavy frost, the ground remains white only in the shadows. A single orange leaf falls from the tall tulip poplar, spiraling slowly down into the dead goldenrods.
November 2, 2023
25F at sunrise. A ruffed grouse—the first I’ve seen since last winter—flushes from under the lilac. Perhaps the population is beginning to recover from West Nile Virus? I relish the small thunder of its wings.
November 1, 2023
Wet snow plastered to everything except the moon, somewhere above the clouds. Off to the southeast, a siren starts to wail.
October 31, 2023
As the moonlight fades, pale patches remain—a killing frost. The woods’ edge is nearly bare of leaves below the brick-red crowns of the oaks.
October 29, 2023
Dead stillness giving way to rain at dawn, in the glowing absence of the full moon.
October 28, 2023
In the dawn light, the tulip poplars glow a deep orange. It’s unseasonably warm. A spring peeper calls at the edge of the woods.