A freakishly warm wind seasoned with rain. A red squirrel’s scold-call launches the dawn chorus: phoebe, wren, cardinal, white-throated sparrow. A turkey gobbles.
rain
March 24, 2025
A damp, gray dawn sweetened by the calls of field sparrows and a bluebird up by the barn. A small shower passes through the woods, rustling like a millipede in the dead leaves.
March 5, 2025
Rain. The stone-wall chipmunk races across the yard and disappears into the woods. The rattle of my metal roofs drowns out everything but a train horn.
February 27, 2025
Hard rain at daybreak easing off into fog. The ground under the trees is still more white than brown. The voices in the creek have increased from a symposium to a convention.
February 13, 2025
Rain falling on snow: a soft sound that slowly grows harder, like a fantasy evolving into a belief. The dark tree limbs still look dapper in their new white sleeves.
January 31, 2025
Fog thickens as the rain eases off. The sodden snowpack shrinks, fitting the ground more closely, clinging to each mound and divot.
January 1, 2025
A gray sunrise, with the kind of tiny, windblown raindrops that started life as snow. Fire sirens wail in the valley, and I picture a house sprouting wings of flame.
December 29, 2024
In the clouds, where rain has nearly erased the remains of the snow. A slow and steady procession of drips gets interrupted by a crow.
December 28, 2024
The tiny, second-string leaves the lilac put out in September have yellowed, glowing in the fog and drizzle like the bright chirps of sparrows.
December 24, 2024
A fresh half-inch of snow turns the woods’ edge into calligraphy. Then an inversion layer brings traffic noise, a shimmer of freezing drizzle, the tut-tutting of a Carolina wren.
December 11, 2024
A dark and rainy dawn. Will anything mark the hidden sunrise? Yes: three crows fly right over the house, yelling. The rain continues.
December 10, 2024
Damp and unseasonably warm. The sky brightens toward mid-morning, and the hillside’s coat of wet oak leaves begins to shine.
December 9, 2024
The snow on the road has turned to quaking puddles. The low rumble of a freight train is the only thing audible above the downpour.
November 28, 2024
Rain zebra-striped with snow; the woods more wet than white. A sodden squirrel trots down the road with a black walnut between her teeth.