Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
Breezy and cool, with occasional outbreaks of sunshine. It takes me two hours to work out that the soft clucking sound I’d thought was a hen turkey is actually a branch rubbing against the gutter for the back roof. A chipmunk rummages under my chair, then scuttles back under the small woodpile next to me.
Low clouds merging into fog. In the front garden, several dozen bergamots are in bloom, rain dripping from their purple locks. A very sodden chipmunk runs past my feet.
Breezy and cool with a clearing sky. The chipmunk who lives in my front garden runs between my feet to the end of the porch, takes fright at something there, and runs back. Raspberries in the yard like bruised thumbs are slowly turning from red to black.
Breezy and warm. A chipmunk races down the driveway, trailed by a great-spangled fritillary. A few small scraps of cloud pass overhead.
Almost all the local marmots appear within the space of a minute: a groundhog pokes its head up beside the porch, a chipmunk is chased out of the black walnut tree beside the road by a gray squirrel, and a red squirrel scolds from the springhouse.
Five degrees above freezing, but snow goes on falling. A chipmunk runs from the woods’ edge into the snowy garden, possibly on a hunt for love. The dripdripdrip of snowmelt onto the porch roof.
A gray sky gravid with rain. A gray squirrel pops out of a hole in the yard, walnut between its teeth. Up in the woods, a chipmunk zips across the snow.