10F/-12C but the wind has mostly died. The plastic flamingo leans only slightly askew in the snowy garden. Patches of blue converge overhead.
cold
March 4, 2022
Sunrise. Trees popping in the cold (11F/-11C). A chickadee adds a rare, third note to his spring song.
February 15, 2022
I love these frigid mornings with their gift of silence. The stream gurgling out from under my yard. Nuthatches. Wren. A distant screech owl.
February 6, 2022
As the sun rises, it descends from icy treetops to hoarfrosted lower branches. It’s quiet. The dial thermometer’s pointer jumps from 8 to 10.
January 31, 2022
Bitter cold. A garlic mustard skeleton hanging over the small hole in the yard that goes down to an underground stream is shaggy with frost.
January 30, 2022
Very cold and still. Just when I think the birds will never wake, the clouds redden a little and a nuthatch fires up its querulous engine.
January 27, 2022
Zero degrees. Sun through bare branches—a shining fur of hoarfrost. Two ravens fly in low and circle my mother’s house.
January 22, 2022
The coldest morning of the year so far. Every few minutes, a tree with ice in its heartwood cracks like a gunshot. The ridge turns pink.
January 21, 2022
Clear and cold: -16C/3F. Two white-breasted nuthatches exchange notes. The smoke from my chimney slinks along the ground toward the south.
January 16, 2022
My first morning back since the New Year: clear, still, and bitter cold. The stream’s gurgle. The enthusiasm of small birds for the sunrise.
November 16, 2021
A wren calls under the porch. It’s five degrees below freezing. An inversion layer brings the whine of tires over the ridge, red with sunrise.
November 6, 2021
Cold and very still. Every leaf in the myrtle patch—Grandma’s legacy—is edged in white. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.
November 4, 2021
25F degrees at dawn. A bat flies low over the meadow as the white-throated sparrows tune up. Frost-encrusted blades of grass seem to glow.
November 2, 2021
Two degrees above freezing with a dull gray sky—very Novemberish. Except the trees aren’t bare, the oaks yet to reach their peak of color.