The porch in my absence has become a home to hornets. They’re up at dawn, dozens inspecting the surface of their great paper death star.
Cold and clear. A squirrel climbs to the top of a red maple, bites off a seed-laden twig and carries it to a lower limb—a feast of wings.
*
The Morning Porch will be on hiatus until September.
A hairy woodpecker loudly inspects the woods’ edge. In the clear, cold air, the half-grown leaves are aglow—almost too green to believe.
The first dame’s-rocket are coming out: dabs of purple among the banks of winter cress and garlic mustard. Basically, it’s rocket season.
Cold and overcast, and the stream still in spate. Some bird wheezes in the treetops like a small bellows or a cheerleader for the wind.
When the rain finally slackens off, I can hear a vireo, goldfinches, the catbird, a train horn, and the throaty roar of a well-fed creek.
The hollow tock-tocking of chipmunks. A milkweed seed floats past: quite a trick, I think, to turn a white beard into a balloon.
Back to sweater weather. The catbird in the French lilac has found a mate—they’re hopping around apparently evaluating nesting material.
Every pit in the porch floor’s paint is stained with pollen. A small samara helicopters past, too young to sprout but not too young to fly.
A great-crested flycatcher responds to a red-bellied woodpecker’s trill. A squirrel missing half its tail fixes me with a hostile stare.
Overcast and cool. Two male catbirds are calling from the old lilacs in adjacent yards. The world is somehow still as it should be.
Breezy and warm. A chipmunk scrambles through the blossoming barberry bush next to the stream, releasing waves of its sperm-like odor.
The bud-burst woods is a backlit canvas of pointillist green. A pileated woodpecker hops down a log, her scarlet crest flashing as she taps.
Birdsong, rustling in the leaf duff, a distant plane: soundtrack to a movie starring the landscape where the only real story is the weather.