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.
black walnut
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Another cool, clear, still morning. The bang of a walnut on a metal roof. A chipmunk’s metronome.
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.
A pause between showers. The thud of a walnut dropped by a squirrel. A housefly circles the porch. The rain starts back up.
An autumnal sunrise, with crisp air and the creek full of voices, bracken browning in the yard, and the walnut leaves experimenting with carotenoids.
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.
Overcast and still. A yellow walnut leaflet flutters down onto the fallen trunk of my favorite climbing tree when I was a kid.
Cool with murky, cloud-mediated sunlight. A hummingbird perches on a walnut branch for thirty seconds, head swiveling all about.