Drizzle falling on an inch of sleet: the ground is white again. A pileated woodpecker’s hollow toc toc toc.
rain
February 23, 2022
Unseasonably warm and overcast. Up in the woods, squirrels nose through leaf duff newly liberated from the snow. A few drops of rain.
February 22, 2022
Gray with occasional showers. Distant crows. The face that I can’t unsee in the big red maple trunk with its expression of perpetual dismay.
February 17, 2022
A crow and a Carolina wren take turns issuing three-beat calls, as if debating: CawCawCaw. TeakettleTeakettleTeakettle. It starts to rain.
February 3, 2022
Cold but not freezing mizzle. Two pileated woodpeckers work the woods’ edge, tilting their heads to the side between taps. A flock of juncos.
December 25, 2021
Little is audible over the drumming of the rain but a train horn—and of course the Carolina wren, sounding as insistently joyous as ever.
December 18, 2021
Steady rain and fog at one degree above freezing: bad luck for our Christmas Bird Count. Over the rain I hear crows, nuthatches, a chickadee.
December 11, 2021
Foggy and damp on the last day of regular firearms deer season. The limbs of the old crabapple glow blueish green with lichen.
December 2, 2021
It’s damp and warmish. A red-bellied woodpecker comes silently rocketing out of the woods. The creek remains mum about last night’s rain.
October 31, 2021
The rain stops but the trees go on dripping. The sky brightens. Through newly bare spicebush branches, I can see the springhouse once again.
October 26, 2021
Breezy drizzle mixing in with falling leaves—those that twirl, those that spiral, those that somersault, those that glide.
October 25, 2021
Gibbous moon overhead through a thin veil of fog. A breeze moves through the forest, liberating the night’s rain.
October 22, 2021
Gloomy with a few drops of rain. I spot a new-to-me Virginia creeper six feet from the porch: that crimson.
October 16, 2021
The last star blinks out just as rain begins to tap on the roof. A spring pepper calls. Dawn begins to seem like a possibility.