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.
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.
August 17, 2024
A pause between showers. The thud of a walnut dropped by a squirrel. A housefly circles the porch. The rain starts back up.
August 10, 2024
An autumnal sunrise, with crisp air and the creek full of voices, bracken browning in the yard, and the walnut leaves experimenting with carotenoids.
August 2, 2024
Darkness falls at 7:50 a.m. as a thunderstorm rumbles in. The yellow walnut leaves fluttering lazily down seem oddly unaffected by sudden sheets of rain.
July 24, 2024
Overcast and still. A yellow walnut leaflet flutters down onto the fallen trunk of my favorite climbing tree when I was a kid.