Overcast and cold. A squirrel is picking up fallen black walnuts, removing their rotten husks, and burying them in the half-frozen yard.
black walnut
October 21, 2020
Out at first light. Venus is visible through the thin fog, slowly fading until I lose it in the already-bare branches of a walnut tree.
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.
October 11, 2020
I am mentally marking walnut saplings for removal when they fill with migrants: yellow-rumped and palm warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet.
October 8, 2020
A classic October morning, bright and crisp. The black cat slinks down the driveway, stepping between the fat fallen walnuts.
October 2, 2020
Walnuts crash down on the back roof. A raven comes croaking over the house, then returns a minute later, silent except for its wingbeats.
September 28, 2020
With each breeze, a shower of yellow leaves. Now and then a whole walnut leaf—spine and rib bones sinking together in this sea of air.
September 27, 2020
A walnut falls from a maple tree. Squirrel as surrealist. The mid-morning fog beginning to glow.
September 23, 2020
A warmer morning; the blue sky harbors an ever-so-slight suggestion of haze. The sound of rodent teeth chiseling open a black walnut.
May 18, 2020
A field sparrow fresh from bathing and a hummingbird fresh from fighting sit two feet apart on a walnut branch, shaking their feathers.
March 30, 2020
A sunny morning foreclosed upon by leaden clouds. The phoebe continues to rant from atop a black walnut sapling, marking time with his tail.
December 5, 2019
Snow flurries. A raven croaks, and I scan the sky for it without success, spotting instead an old bird’s nest at the top of a walnut tree.
December 19, 2018
A gray squirrel runs along the gray road bearing a freshly dug-up walnut. High in the blue, a jet’s contrail is short enough to be a tail.
November 27, 2018
Light snow powdering my black sleeves. I watch a nuthatch inspect each branch of a walnut, its sideways hop and dip when it finds a morsel.