Like green tassels on Victorian lampshades the birch catkins fluttering in the breeze. It’s warm—a perfect day for tree sex.
black birch
Friday January 15, 2021
An unfeasibly large number of chickadees foraging along the woods’ edge, calling, singing, dangling from black birch twigs like mutant fruit.
Saturday October 17, 2020
As the rising sun glimmers through the trees, birch and walnut leaves begin to fall, the first hard frost glittering on the ground.
Friday October 16, 2020
Rainy and cold. White-throated sparrows call in different keys, each more plaintive than the last. The birches are fluttery with kinglets.
Friday April 03, 2020
Sun silvering black birch twigs. From the woods beyond, the call of a Cooper’s hawk. It can’t be long till the first shadbush blooms.
Sunday December 01, 2019
After hours of rain, woods and meadow are shrink-wrapped in ice. The black birch twigs creak as chickadees land to liberate a few seeds.
Sunday May 05, 2019
Rain. A black birch at the woods’ edge may regret its timing, shaggy orange catkins making it look like the most Victorian of lampshades.
Sunday November 25, 2018
A slit in the gray clouds widening to reveal the sun, like a sudden eye. Goldfinches feasting in the crown of a birch become silhouettes.
Tuesday November 06, 2018
With birches and maples at the woods’ edge all bare, I can see unimpeded up the hillside to small clouds lost among the trees and the rain.
Monday October 29, 2018
A few oaks are turning brown behind the birches’ washed-out yellow. High on a bare limb, a squirrel nest the exact shape of a porcupine.