White sky. The soft calls of a pair of downy woodpeckers on adjacent trees. Four chickadees on a high-speed chase tear through the lilac.
lilac
The moon comes out, and there’s the rabbit, crouching next to the lilac. It races across the driveway and disappears into the cattails.
The urgent grunts of a buck in rut chasing two does through the laurel, their movements easy to follow now that the trees are nearly bare.
The French lilac, unseasonably green; Japanese barberries flaunting too-numerous fruit; me with my steaming Ethiopian brew, rain in my face.
Clouds at dawn change from red to orange to pale yellow, like black gum trees in reverse. A towhee lands in the lilac—a splash of rose.
No yellow in the lilac yet, but a growing spectrum of greens. Random clatters from the new house site, where a green metal roof is going up.
Gold is spreading from the goldenrod up into the trees, here and there: walnut, elm, birch. A jay dives into the lilac: blue from the sky.
50°F. A daddylonglegs descends a goldenrod stem, slow as the minute hand on a clock. A catbird bursts from the lilac, crackling with alarm.
A phoebe darts and hovers, gleaning insects off the wet weeds. Yesterday, I watched a phoebe help feed four catbird fledglings in the lilac.
Four titmice flit about the yard. The dead elm twigs that are closest to the lilac have acquired a greenish tinge. A beetle’s zigzag flight.