Humid, cool and overcast at sunrise — an orange glow. Two thin deer wander through the meadow at the edge of the woods, lowering their heads for a mouthful of bracken, some grass, a goldenrod tip …
goldenrod
Wind and rain at dawn. Half an hour before sunrise, a great twittering erupts from the meadow as hundreds of white-throated sparrows, sheltering deep in the goldenrod, begin to awaken.
There’s more yellow than ever in the woods’ edge trees, in the spicebushes, in the meadows filled with goldenrod, and now the sun—the opposite of mellow among the yellow leaves of a black birch.
Partly cloudy and cool at sunrise, with more yellow and orange leaves than I’ve ever seen this early in the fall: not just walnut and black gum but black birch, tulip poplar, and even a few maples, just as our 30 acres of goldenrod approach their peak of bloom. I’m reminded of the Chinese name for San Francisco: old gold mountain.
Rainy and cold. The tall goldenrod heads are bowed, flowering downward. A squirrel’s keening alarm for a hawk.
Gray above, white below: a snowbird hops atop five inches of fresh snow, noshing on goldenrod, snakeroot, and stiltgrass seeds, leaving lines of little arrows pointing backwards.
On a cloudless, quiet mid-morning after a heavy frost, the ground remains white only in the shadows. A single orange leaf falls from the tall tulip poplar, spiraling slowly down into the dead goldenrods.
Gloomy and cold at dawn. From the depths of the seed-laden goldenrod, the first, bright chips and whistles as the sparrow horde wakes up.
Dawn: the red thread of a contrail fraying as it fades. Fog rises from the goldenrod, erasing the faint dot that must’ve been Mercury.
Another cool and quiet autumn morning. The snakeroot has faded to a blowsy brown just as the goldenrod reaches its pinnacle of yellow.
Half an hour past sunrise, the top of the tall tulip poplar turns gold. But I notice that yellow leaves continue down the tree. One sails out into the goldenrod.
Half an hour before sunrise, the goldenrod is already aglow. Venus and Jupiter fade into a cloudless sky. Towhees begin to tweet.
Through a hole in the forest canopy, a ray of sun illuminates one tall goldenrod in the springhouse meadow. An indescribably sweet odor of ripeness and rich earth.
Cold and gray. Goldenrod seed heads like white-haired old men nodding and whispering far-fetched conspiracy theories about a coming winter.