Breezy and cool. The white lilac, with at least 75% of its leaves dead from disease, is bizarrely in blossom again, with at least five full-sized clusters, white as flags signalling surrender.
An autumnal sunrise heralded by crickets. I search the bracken patch for any two fronds in the same shade of green, yellow, or brown.
In the wake of a quick hummingbird with her elegant wand, a bumblebee continues to work the jewelweed, clambering up into each orange throat.
Half a moon alone in the sky. A silent catbird flies into the half-dead lilac. Off through the forest, blinding fragments of the sun.
Overcast and breezy. The orange jewelweed below the porch has grown so tall, I can actually see the hummingbird visiting the topmost blossoms now—the green blur of her wings, the dew slicking her bill.
A dawn chorus of tree crickets, field crickets and mole crickets. After a half-clear sunrise, the clouds move in.
An hour past sunrise, the first cicada call of the day stutters to a stop halfway through and resumes a half-hour later. Mosquitoes circle my feet propped up on the balustrade.
Sunrise reddens the western ridge as the flat-tire moon fades, alone in the sky. Jewelweed flowers along the stream nod and sway as the first hummingbird makes her rounds.
Crystal-clear and still at sunrise. Dew drips from the roof. Over by the springhouse, a red squirrel and a Carolina wren are having a free and frank exchange of views.
Clear and cold at dawn. The nearly full moon gutters among the trees. A screech owl trills with a rising intonation, which feels like some kind of omen.
Mid-morning and the sun is just struggling free of clouds and/or smoke. A chicken cackles in the distance. Annual cicadas exchange raspy notes.
Neither hot nor cold under a clouded-over sky that’s faintly blue, permitting sunshine but not shadows. The hummingbird circling my hung-out red bandanna appears to have developed a taste for my salt, tapping all over with her lightning-fast tongue.
Yesterday’s red bandanna, hung out to dry in the rafters, attracts first one, then two hummingbirds. Inevitably, they fight. The winner settles on the closest tree branch.
Thin, high clouds. The yellow smudge that is the sun rises to the tune of quarry trucks beeping backwards. I study the weeds where I saw a bear disappear ten hours earlier, just at dusk.