Overcast. The first milky-white peony is open, facing the road where a sparrow struggles to swallow a large green caterpillar.
Thunderstorm just past, many leaves on the maple and black cherry trees remain upside-down, like pale, open palms turned toward the sky.
Light rain. The bracken in the yard have replaced the fronds they lost in the late frost, but they have a hurried, bunched appearance.
Another cloudless morning. A pair of mating robber flies joined at the rear like a pushmi-pullyu fly past, wings a-shimmer in the sun.
Gloriously cool and sunny. A doe grazing at the other end of the yard stiffens and cocks her ears at a crow call—a sure sign she has a fawn.
Hummingbirds fight each other; a towhee fights his reflection in the living room window. The sky is as blue and empty as it gets.
In the hot sun, a bit of floating down from a cattail, or a dandelion—some faux feline thing, which of course will land on its feet.
Misty rain. After drinking from the feeder, a hummingbird sips water from the ant guard as if to cleanse her palate.
I move around to the shady side of the house. Different birds here: oriole high in a walnut tree, towhee tapping at the dining room window.
Humid. An indigo bunting flits from bush to bush in the yard—all likely nest spots. The mechanical-sounding call of a black-billed cuckoo.
Overcast and damp. My mother stops by to point out the highly unexceptional call of the aptly named least flycatcher.
A tiger swallowtail visiting garlic mustard—wan white flower heads momentarily covered in glory. A blue jay yells from the highest treetop.
Sky darkening to rain. I realize that the bare soil I’d taken for the spoil heap from some animal’s burrow is in fact a growing ant mound.
A hawthorn blooming at the woods’ edge glows each time the sun comes out. A scarlet tanager calls just beyond: that plucked banjo string.