Overcast and cool. Last night’s storm has left the Japanese stiltgrass sprawled this way and that, its stalks just beginning to turn red.
Japanese stiltgrass
8/1/2023
Sun glimmering through thin, high clouds. The distant rumble of a train. In the long grass, each drop of dew begins to shine.
7/29/2023
White sky with distant crows. The stiltgrass in the meadow is still lying low after a thunderstorm yesterday at dusk.
7/25/2023
Sunrise thunderstorm: the sky darkening just when you least expect it, then the downpour and all the leaves of grass nodding like headbangers as the thunder booms.
1/29/2022
Cold and quiet. A junco foraging in the stiltgrass chirps after every beakful. A five-squirrel parade snakes past the yard: mating season.
9/24/2021
Clear and cold. I see that the stiltgrass stems have all turned color in the yard—a chaos of feathery green threaded through with red.
9/9/2021
Autumn comes from the ground up: stiltgrass stems reddening as bracken fronds bronze, while funnel spiderwebs snag the fog.
3/26/2020
So much song from a single robin perched 80 feet up in a black locust! Down below, juncos comb through the prone stiltgrass for seeds.
1/10/2020
Overcast. A strong smell of sewage from the treatment plant two miles away. Juncos forage in the dead stiltgrass, chirping back and forth.
11/12/2018
A few, tiny patches of snow linger behind clumps of dead stiltgrass. The sun blazes through the thinning crown of an oak; I start to sneeze.
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.
9/19/2018
Like hair on a head the way the stiltgrass falls about in orderly whorls. A raven flies over, hoarse cries out of sync with its wingbeats.
10/28/2017
Among the died-back stiltgrass below the porch, a cluster of native deer-tongue grass has emerged, pointed “tongues” just beginning to curl.
10/27/2017
From under a hat brim ablaze with sun, I gaze out at the stiltgrass glazed with frost. Jays in the treetops. Falling acorns tick and tock.