Cool and partly cloudy. A fledgling wren at the woods’ edge begs to be fed—an interrogatory whine. The mob of feral garlic heads are splitting their hoods.
July 20, 2024
Sun on leaves fading from shine to sheen. Sound is still out of the east: the slowly expanding crater swallowing farms and forests. It rumbles. It shakes.
July 19, 2024
Clear and still, except for the distant beeping of quarry trucks. A common yellowthroat darts through the lilac bush, foraging for breakfast. A gray squirrel sounds the hawk alarm.
July 18, 2024
Partly cloudy and cool. After yesterday evening’s brief rains, the happiness of the plants in my yard is nearly palpable. Formerly desiccated bergamot blossoms have swollen back into bloom.
July 17, 2024
Cloudy at sunrise. The bump bump of a groundhog returning to a burrow under the house. A dragonfly cuts back and forth across the yard.
July 16, 2024
Sunlight shimmers on the fur of a squirrel chiseling the shell of a disinterred nut, the morning coolness slowly giving way to heat.
July 15, 2024
Breezy and warm. Half of the leaves on the big tulip tree at the woods’ edge have turned yellow from the drought, and are beginning to fall. A deer coughs by the springhouse.
July 14, 2024
In the early morning coolness, a soft thunder of deer hooves up in the woods. From overhead, the calls of purple martins already on the wing.
July 13, 2024
Cool with murky, cloud-mediated sunlight. A hummingbird perches on a walnut branch for thirty seconds, head swiveling all about.
July 12, 2024
Crystal-clear and cool. A Cooper’s hawk calls from a sunlit limb at the woods’ edge—a sound I haven’t heard since early spring.
July 10, 2024
Here and there, the bracken in my yard is beginning to turn yellow. A hummingbird buzzes past, pausing to inspect several garlic heads.
July 9, 2024
Cool and clear. A pair of bindweed blossoms have opened on a fence post like microwave transmitters. A tiny patch of fog shelters from the sun in the lowest part of the meadow.
July 8, 2024
Every morning, more soapwort blossoms, and the raspberry canes are stretching into new territory. A harvestman stalks across my gray wasteland of a porch.
July 7, 2024
Clear and blessedly cool as sunlight floods the treetops. A distant siren. The incessant chatter of goldfinches.