The first full day of astronomical autumn dawns to downpour. A cricket in the garden scrapes out a last few, scattered notes.
rain
September 22, 2021
Sunrise somewhere over the rain. In the dripping forest canopy, a dark card-shuffle of wings.
September 5, 2021
Rain easing off by mid-morning. At one end of the lilac, I spot some dark leaves: buckthorn, I think, grown 10 feet tall without my noticing.
September 1, 2021
Rain thickens toward mid-morning as the ex-hurricane moves through. One cricket still calls from the shelter of peony leaves.
August 18, 2021
Rain and warblers. An earth-shaking blast from the quarry two miles away. The soft susurrus of tree crickets.
August 10, 2021
Tulip poplar leaves waving like four-fingered, cartoon hands. A shimmer of mizzle thickens into rain. The Carolina wrens go on dueting.
July 21, 2021
A few drops of rain. A gnatcatcher fluttering up from the weeds to a walnut tree swerves to—I assume—catch a gnat.
July 8, 2021
Brief rain showers, one after another. A goldfinch lands sideways on a blossoming mullein stalk as if to compare yellows.
June 22, 2021
A doe picks her way through the rain-soaked meadow, fawn scrambling along behind. A cerulean warbler’s ascending song.
June 10, 2021
Downpour. An ant abandons its dead caterpillar. An earthworm dangles from a cardinal’s bill.
June 8, 2021
A late-morning pause in the rain. The sun comes out, and I notice that the first evening primroses have opened—that flat, obvious yellow.
June 4, 2021
Rain just past, tree leaves glisten in the sun. A brown thrasher holds forth like a street-corner prophet, hallelujah, hallelujah.
May 30, 2021
Rainy and cold. An indigo bunting and a phoebe clash briefly in the air above the stream and retire to neighboring walnut branches.
May 29, 2021
Mid-morning, and the rain has dwindled into cold mizzle. In the marsh at the bottom of the meadow, the spring peepers start back up.