A couple of cold nights and the yellow has spread like a contagion through the birches. A squirrel hangs down among the green walnuts.
black walnut
September 16, 2022
Cold (46F) with thin, high clouds. Black walnuts knocking on the roof. A red-tailed hawk drops in to visit the squirrels.
September 9, 2022
Thick fog slowly infused with sunlight. A squirrel drops pieces of black walnut shell into the dew-soaked weeds.
August 22, 2022
Overcast with a shimmer of light rain. A red-eyed vireo still calls at the woods’ edge. The thud of a black walnut onto a roof.
August 6, 2022
The first yellow leaves on the walnuts: it’s late summer already. The fog hides trees and reveals old spiderwebs like messages in invisible ink.
August 4, 2022
Cool beginning to another scorcher. A fly goes for a walk down a porch column. The thud of a walnut on the road.
July 17, 2022
Another phantom shower, existing only on the weather app. A firefly wanders past, looking for a walnut leaf to spend the day under.
June 1, 2022
A black-and-white warbler probes the cracks between the floorboards for soft bits of grit and hair to line its nest, high in a walnut tree.*
*Or not. See here.
May 30, 2022
Clear and cool. A gnatcatcher scoops a caterpillar off a walnut leaf and swipes it against a branch three times before swallowing.
February 4, 2022
Dawn, and all the stream’s voices are raised. A squirrel finds a black walnut sticking out of a snowbank and races off with it.
December 10, 2021
Finches cluster high in a black birch, gorging in silence. A squirrel digs up a walnut and re-buries it on the other side of the road.
December 7, 2021
Cold, overcast, and nearly still: my clouds of breath drift sideways, leading my eye to a half-shell of black walnut, its empty brain case.
December 1, 2021
The first day of meteorological winter. It’s warm. I-99 is barely audible. The sound of teeth on walnut shell alternates with scold-calls.
October 7, 2021
Rain and fog. With the goldenrod going gray, the yellow has moved from the meadow to the woods’ edge: spicebush, walnut, birch, elm, tulip tree.