Overcast and damp, with the intense green of new leaves everywhere. Two doves moan in different keys. A squirrel carrying a walnut walks down the road out of sight.
black walnut
April 17, 2025
Clear and still with frost in the yard and the gibbous moon caught in the treetops like a deflated balloon. A brown creeper sprials up a walnut tree. The sun comes up.
March 31, 2025
Rain easing off along with the dawn chorus. The sky brightens, and a brown creeper on the walnut tree beside the road bursts into song.
February 12, 2025
The slow fall of small snowflakes never quite stops. A squirrel with a half a tail bounds past, carrying his freshy disinterred breakfast: a black lump of frozen walnut.
January 12, 2025
Not far below freezing. The sun appears through a keyhole in the clouds. A gray squirrel reaches into the snow and extracts a black walnut.
November 28, 2024
Rain zebra-striped with snow; the woods more wet than white. A sodden squirrel trots down the road with a black walnut between her teeth.
November 20, 2024
We’re in the clouds. They drum on the roofs and echo with bird calls. A dead walnut branch, scaley with lichen, lies in the road like a landed fish.
October 22, 2024
Orange light seeps down the western ridge. The half moon high overhead has been abandoned by its entourage of stars. A crow sits in a newly bare walnut tree, yelling.
October 8, 2024
Clear and cold. The red squirrel I’ve been hearing scold finally appears, racing up a bare walnut tree just as a deer hunter drags the first kill of the season out of the woods.
September 29, 2024
The rain goes on and on for hours. I watch a drenched squirrel at the end of a branch lose his grip on a walnut. A small brown moth circles my face.
September 20, 2024
Clear and still, except for the periodic crashing down of a walnut, each one followed by a small entourage of yellow leaves. The sun clears the ridge and the trees reclaim their shadows.
September 18, 2024
Heavily overcast and still—a perfect morning to watch walnut leaves fall: the flutterers, the gliders, the tumblers, the spirallers, and the rare ones that float straight down.
September 6, 2024
Another cool, clear, still morning. The bang of a walnut on a metal roof. A chipmunk’s metronome.
September 1, 2024
Clear and cool. I watch a gray squirrel descend a tree, search its memory/the ground for a walnut, dig it up, and find a secluded spot under the lilac to chisel it open.