Cool and clear, but still with some high-altitude murk. I miss the deep blue of my boyhood summers, the bright sun and dark shadows under the trees.
The second cool morning in a row, but quieter and not quite as clear. A deer looks up at me more with annoyance than alarm and goes back to grazing.
Cool and clear. A female hummingbird keeps hovering in front of my face and chirping, intermittently joined by two others. I am not wearing any bright colors. I’m left wondering what message I’ve failed to understand.
Fog at first light. The random percussion of rain dripping off the trees slowly joined by bird calls: pewee, towhee, song sparrow, wren…
Nuthatch scolding a gray squirrel, who scratches himself with a hind leg. The rising sun takes its place among the goldfinches.
A ten-minute shower unmentioned in the forecast. The sky brightens. A tiny white moth circles the yard.
Dawn fog loud with noise from the interstate, thanks to an inversion layer: it’s chilly for July. I don a flannel shirt and soon find myself daydreaming about autumn.
The best way to summon a hummingbird, it seems, is with another hummingbird: as soon as one appears, there’s another to fight with it. A deer sneezes behind the springhouse.
Heavily overcast and still, as if it’s going to rain at any moment. The usual birds saying the usual things. The deep-summer hegemony of green.
Fog lingering into mid-morning. Whatever the crows are up to, it involves a lot of begging sounds. The wild garlic heads are beginning to split.
The catbird mews and warbles, a hummingbird rockets back and forth, but it’s the mosquito’s still, small voice that gets my attention.
Haze before the heat. The tulip poplar sprout in its circle of deer fence is waving its newest Mickey Mouse hands.
Cool enough to seem autumnal, but for the wood thrush and hooded warbler calling from the woods’ edge and the hummingbirds buzzing in the bergamot.
Cool and clear, apart from some high haze; the treetops glow with sunrise. One yellow leaf spirals down.