The tall goldenrod’s budding tops continue to expand, extending new arms. I find a penny in my pocket and fling it at the hornets’ nest.
Cool and clear. The hair I cut last night by moonlight, leaning over the rail with the electric clippers, still shines silver in the weeds.
Overcast and cool, with the beeping of quarry trucks. A pair of cardinals land above the dry creek bed, exchange a few chirps, and fly off.
When I move my head, the hummingbird darts in for a closer look, leveling her long samurai bill at my neck, my ear, my glasses.
The fog has outlined every spider web, making the dead cherry look like the Flying Dutchman, tattered sails ghosting in the breeze.
A titmouse combs the dead cherry tree for insects, his black seed of an eye and wizard’s cap bobbing as he snaps at shriveled leaves.
Would morning glories keep blooming all summer as the wild bindweed does? This morning, four new horns fill with tree-cricket trills.
When I come outside, four deer run off: two doe, a fawn, and a buck with antlers so new he doesn’t yet duck low enough to avoid branches.
Dozens of dragonflies silhouetted against the sky appear and disappear in the dawn fog. The trees still drip from a storm in the wee hours.
Scattered bird calls—cardinal, vireo, field sparrow—all sound perfunctory except for the goldfinches, who are in thistle heaven at last.
A netwing beetle flies past at eye-level, its orange-striped, eponymous elytra raised in a semaphor U. The muggy air thickens into rain.
Yellow stained-glass wings of a tiger swallowtail circling the shadowed yard. The smell of cowshit wafts up from Sinking Valley.
Cool, clear and quiet—a silence that’s part Sunday and part molting season. The Canada thistles too are shedding white fur into the breeze.
Halfway up the hill, a yellow-billed cuckoo is calling over and over, that lyrical coo turning mechanical, relentless. Mosquito in my ear.