Overcast and damp. A hummingbird visits the jewelweed growing in the drip line from the roof, which still drips from a shower at dawn. A wood thrush sings.
rain
July 17, 2025
Overcast at sunrise. Each breeze brings a brief shower from a midnight storm. A mosquito wallows in the long hair of my forearm.
June 27, 2025
Rain tapering off by eight. Even the fog looks green. Wild garlic plants in the yard are beginning to straighten, heads going up like herons trying to swallow large fish.
June 18, 2025
Rain and fog. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the 17-year cicadas whose one summer in the sun has so far been so sodden. I watch one go motoring past, wings mirroring the white sky.
June 16, 2025
An intensely green lushness makes an orphan out of the brown pile of juniper cuttings at the woods’ edge—last winter’s one spot of green. At 7:10, in the pouring rain, the first cicada starts up.
June 14, 2025
Rain at dawn tapering off into another patter alongside the red-eyed vireo’s. Wood thrushes sing back and forth. From deep in the lilac, a house finch lets loose.
June 7, 2025
Rain at sunrise. A flower longhorn beetle takes refuge under the porch, landing beside my mug. The crash of a falling limb.
May 29, 2025
The rain has stopped, but everything drips. In the splay of dying daffodil leaves below the porch, glowing white dewberry blossoms.
May 28, 2025
Cold rain. The wind from a distant storm stirs the bright green, half-grown walnut leaves, moving on into the darker greens of the forest.
May 22, 2025
Birds still singing in a downpour: scarlet tanager, common yellowthroat, Acadian flycatcher, great-crested flycatcher… Fronds of bracken tremble as if readying for flight.
May 21, 2025
It’s been raining for hours, drumming on the leaves and dripping from the furred tongues of irises, which sway ever so slightly on their tall stalks.
May 14, 2025
Rain tapering off by mid-morning. I’m still entranced by the intense green of the trees, now supplemented by white clusters of black cherry blossoms and brown clusters of red maple keys.
May 13, 2025
Warm rain. The hollow echoes with pileated woodpecker drumming and the REEP, REEP calls of great-crested flycatchers. In the yard, an American redstart is singing one of his least forgettable songs.
May 9, 2025
Cold rain drumming on the porch roof. A ruby-throated hummingbird buzzes in to study his reflection in my green steel thermos.