Patches of dull sunlight brighten as the clouds thin. A distant whine of traffic is sweetened by goldfinch chatter in the treetops. Below the porch, wild garlics are beginning to raise their crane’s-bill heads.
clouds
Around mid-morning, one of the groundhogs living under the house emerges from a hole beside the porch and goes off to forage. The sun appears through a hole in the clouds and lights up the elderberry blossoming beside the creek.
Breezy and warm. A chipmunk races down the driveway, trailed by a great-spangled fritillary. A few small scraps of cloud pass overhead.
Faint rumors of a storm at midmorning; the sun briefly goes in. The big tulip tree at the woods’ edge raises a thousand yellow cups of nectar to the white sky and its winged legions of beetles.
Sun and thin clouds—and almost autumnal feeling to the air. But a hooded warbler’s insistent call quickly dispells that impression. A groundhog pops up beside the porch, sees me and disappears again.
Sun glimmering through a scrim of cirrus. The aftermath of the dawn chorus isn’t exactly silent; it just has longer pauses for breath… until the goldfinches go gadding about through the treetops like a rickety circus.
Sun from under a lid of cloud illuminates the western ridge. A hooded warbler just inside the woods’ edge moves into the yard as the sky clears, keeping up his insistent chant for more than an hour.
Heavily overcast and cold. A half hour past sunrise, only a field sparrow, a red-eyed vireo and an ovenbird still sing. A few goldfinches chitter in the treetops.
Cool and nearly clear, with cirrus coming in after sunrise, and the sun like an old soldier fading away as a truck rounds the bend of the road, hauling a new roof for the barn.
A flaming pink sky subsides into orange, then gray. A scattering of raindrops. A red squirrel follows a chipping sparrow’s rattle with one of its own.
Thin cloud, yet the sun’s still strong enough for leaf-glimmer and the shimmer of spider-silk strands already stringing tree to tree. A gray squirrel chases a red squirrel past my feet.
Sun through thin clouds on an unseasonably warm morning. A carpenter bee inspects my aging porch. Next to the old broken dog statue in my yard, the white narcissus is in bloom.
Under gray skies, the leaf buds of tulip trees are splitting open: green fuzz against the clouds. A cowbird’s liquid note.
Quiet and cool at mid-morning. A cloud appears in the east only to disintegrate. Towhees call from several directions as I finish my tea.