The rhythmic thumping of a monstrous digger at the quarry two miles away. My father hollers from his front porch to come look at a mole.
A restless wind turns over leaves and passes through the house, as if searching for something it can’t find so far from the tropics.
A downy woodpecker lands on the dead elm, his black-and-white feathers against the barkless trunk as startling and dramatic as a totem pole.
A violently shaking black walnut branch passes its affliction to an adjacent locust: gray squirrel with an unripe walnut between its teeth.
The rain-drenched soapwort petals are showing a faint wash of pink. Is that any way to age? Evening primrose leaves have turned barn-red.
A Carolina wren rattles in the rain gutter, perching on the rim — its own feeding trough — and bobs up and down on its backward knees.
Even on such a cold morning, a faint hush of crickets. A cicada starts up: less a whine than a loud whisper. The slow chant of a vireo.
A plane drags its cross-shaped shadow over the ridge, loud as an evangelist. A few clouds. Half a moon abandoned in the center of the sky.
A dark shield bug’s luminous green underside imparts a faint glow to its patch of column. Its antennae tremble violently when I draw near.
A catbird scolds a feral cat: harsh, descending Nos. Slick with dew, the lanceolate leaves of goldenrod shimmer in the sun like green fish.
A buck in velvet, his coat already turning gray, startles up out of the grass. A hungry hummingbird presses her bill to the metal flamingo.
A black ant sways and staggers. A white caterpillar turns and begins to descend the white column, as if finally convinced it’s not a tree.
A male and female goldfinch glean seeds from a tall bull thistle. She eats in silence while he in his loud yellow suit chatters on and on.
As always when the air is clear and the sun at a low angle, I’m astonished by how many small insects drift back and forth between the trees.