A shimmer of rain, which the roof gathers into a smattering of drips. A pileated woodpecker flies over, yelling its head off. A pair of catbirds exchange notes.
Plummer’s Hollow
Inside a white whale of fog, the trees drip and drop yellow leaves, and the sun is felt more than seen, with a faint wash of blue beyond.
Sun through a scrim of cirrus. The hillside ticks with chipmunks. Two white-breasted nuthatches call back and forth at the woods’ edge.
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.
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.
Chickadee scold-calls join an agitated red squirrel above the springhouse. Nothing stirs in the deep weeds. The sun burrows into a cloud.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.