Cold and dawn-dark at 8:30. The ridge disappears into cloud, allowing me to imagine real mountains—a fastness far from anything but rain.
rain
March 21, 2011
Cold, gray and rainy. I’m wearing my spring coat, but it could be November, except for the pussy willow catkins—those glimmering furs.
March 11, 2011
The ground is mostly bare again, but the wind is salted with more fine flakes. Water thunders in every ditch. A freight train wails.
March 10, 2011
Hard rain falling into slush, and the fog thickening: cloud into cloud. Buds glow yellow on the lilac where two titmice flit.
March 6, 2011
Small rain on an east wind. Swelling buds impart a faint red hue to the woods’ edge, and a song sparrow states the obvious: spring is here.
February 28, 2011
After all-night rain, snow cover persists in the woods, but it must be thin. The trees loom and fade as the fog shifts. The stream roars.
February 25, 2011
A thumping in the crawlspace under the house and muddy footprints in the snow: the resident woodchuck is in heat. Rain drums on the roof.
January 19, 2011
After last night’s rain, the snow fits each dip and hummock more tightly, like a garment shrunk in the wash. The creaking of doves’ wings.
December 12, 2010
Freezing rain and fog. Snowbirds crowd the melted tire tracks in the gravel driveway, filling their gizzards wth grit while they can.
December 3, 2010
Tuesday’s rain still roars in the creek and gurgles under the yard. The moss garden has turned mountainous from an orogeny of ice.
November 30, 2010
A cold, wet morning that must test the hunters’ mettle. Over the rain, the rattle of the window-tapping cardinal clashing with her nemesis.
November 25, 2010
Steady rain, and the temperature just two degrees above freezing. In the herb bed, the pale blue wheel of a blossom on the invasive myrtle.
November 23, 2010
An inversion layer at daybreak: the high whine of tires on asphalt rings in my ear. The sky grows dark again, but it’s only a mizzle.
November 4, 2010
Rain and fog. A squirrel strips water from its head with a lightning-quick motion of its front paws. The dark dead eyestalks of the tansy.