Soft light on the hard frost: more glimmer than glitter. A pileated woodpecker’s kak kak kak like a high-pitched engine trying to start.
frost
11/9/2019
-5°C. The wilted and faded lilac leaves have acquired mold-like coats of frost. A white-breasted nuthatch’s nasal two notes.
1/28/2019
The fast scrabbling of claws on black locust bark: another squirrel’s in heat. Dead grass blades along the stream are rococo with hoarfrost.
12/27/2018
Hoarfrosted grass glitters in the sun. A nuthatch calling up in the woods sounds more certain than I’ve ever felt about anything in my life.
12/5/2018
Under a white sky, the small white car of the meter man, and a heavy frost. Two nuthatches are having a frank exchange of views.
11/8/2018
All the most supine stiltgrass has grown white fur in the night. Two nuthatches foraging at the woods’ edge react badly to my sneeze.
10/25/2018
Patches of white in the yard—the first frost. So late! But then the oaks are still green, the sky still constrained by leaves.
3/31/2018
On the first morning of my married life, the sky is as blue as it gets. Phoebe, rooster, bluebird. The sparkle of frost gives way to sheen.
3/11/2018
An achingly blue sky, and the sun lower than it should be thanks to the tyranny of clocks. Crows yell. The ground sparkles with frost.
1/26/2018
As the sunlight advances, the frosted yard turns from glitter to glisten. The barn-red cardinal’s inexplicably cheerful two-note tune.
12/21/2017
Clear and very still. Frost’s fine needlework on the dead grass in front of the springhouse, where a wren keeps up an agitated chirping.
12/2/2017
Heavy frost. When the sun strikes it, a faint mist rises from the yard. My father stops the car in the road to say he’s just seen a mink.
11/30/2017
Frost on the bent-down blades of cattails. Two single-prop planes from different directions—their drones blending then separating again.
11/15/2017
The sun stretches one stripe of dazzle across the frosted yard. A chickadee hangs from a goldenrod seed head, fossicking through the fluff.