Overcast with a restless feeling to the air. When the rain comes it is an autumn rain, quiet, lacking the exuberance of breeding birds.
rain
Tuesday 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.
Monday 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.
Thursday 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.
Wednesday August 17, 2022
The sun finally struggles out by midmorning. Rain-dampened vegetation glistens like a salamander’s skin.
Monday 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.
Friday August 05, 2022
Rain and fog. A wood thrush sings three times and falls silent. A mourning dove goes on and on.
Thursday 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.
Monday 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.
Sunday 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.
Saturday 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.
Saturday July 02, 2022
A few drips of rain. The squeaky begging of a fledgling at the woods’ edge. It breaks cover to hazard flying—a flurry of wingbeats.
Monday June 27, 2022
Everything drips. A wood thrush chases a rival out of the woods and pauses in a spicebush for a look around.
Thursday June 23, 2022
Fog and mizzle. The usual doe and fawn graze in the springhouse meadow, their ears swivelling above the sodden vegetation.