Steady rain of the sort we’ve needed for months. Lily-of-the-valley’s drought-burnt leaves turn slick as tongues.
rain
September 8, 2022
Light rain accompanying a front. As it tapers off, the yard fills with small birds—yellow-rumped and other warblers combing the leaves for breakfast.
September 5, 2022
Rain prolongs the early-morning light till well past 10:00. A chipmunk appears in the garden, bustling among the drenched weeds.
September 4, 2022
Overcast with a restless feeling to the air. When the rain comes it is an autumn rain, quiet, lacking the exuberance of breeding birds.
August 23, 2022
Clouds gravid with rain at sunrise. A wood thrush calls quietly. In the top of the tallest oak, a squirrel’s silhouette begins its descent.
August 22, 2022
Overcast with a shimmer of light rain. A red-eyed vireo still calls at the woods’ edge. The thud of a black walnut onto a roof.
August 18, 2022
Crystal-clear, with leaves still wet from rain: I carry a chair up into the woods, luxuriate in the shimmering green and gold.
August 17, 2022
The sun finally struggles out by midmorning. Rain-dampened vegetation glistens like a salamander’s skin.
August 15, 2022
Drizzle thickening now and then into proper rain. The bracken in my yard glows in all the colors of decline and fall.
August 5, 2022
Rain and fog. A wood thrush sings three times and falls silent. A mourning dove goes on and on.
July 28, 2022
Cool, overcast, and humid. A breeze brings the smell of ozone and a hush of rain finishing its journey down from the trees.
July 18, 2022
Fifteen hours of off-and-on rain and everything looks greener. The big red maple that just finished dying sheds a chunk of rotten wood.
July 17, 2022
Another phantom shower, existing only on the weather app. A firefly wanders past, looking for a walnut leaf to spend the day under.
July 16, 2022
Heavily overcast; on the weather app, it’s raining. The sky lightens; on the weather app, bright sunshine. From Mom’s house, the measured tones of Morning Edition.