An hour after the last raindrops, wet leaves glisten as the sun glimmers through thin clouds. The sound of teeth chiseling through a walnut shell. The stems of bent stiltgrass in the meadow begin to redden.
clouds
A white sky at mid-morning beginning to glow as the clouds thin, while below in the meadow the white snakeroot is beginning to bloom. I find a dogwood sawfly larva from a later instar than yesterday’s fluffy white grubs; this is a proper green caterpillar crawling across my shirt.
A rare low-humidity morning begins with crows heralding the sunrise and a screech owl trilling in the distance. Yellow clouds fade to white. A bluebird begins warbling as I open my laptop.
Breezy and cool. The sun glimmers through thin clouds, prompting a Linne’s cicada to call—that stuttering buzz. A bluebird sings up by the shed.
Cloudy and humid, with a steady stream of goldfinch and Carolina wren chatter. The sun appears through a hole in the clouds and multiple holes in the forest canopy to strike my face, summoning the demon of a sneeze.
The sky is white, though the weather app insists it’s clear: thick haze from wildfires far to the north, I think. Goldfinches dominate the morning soundtrack, beginning to nest just as many of the migrants are wrapping it up.
Breezy and cool, with enough high-altitude murk to keep the sun at half strength. A firefly circles the arm of my chair. Two more bindweed blossoms have opened above yesterday’s, which hangs limp as an empty balloon.
A white bindweed flower has opened in the yard—morning glory enough for a sky more white than blue. Wild garlic heads have almost all straightened up and begun to split open.
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.
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.
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.