Tree crickets rather than birdsong: it feels like late summer already. But after yesterday’s soaking rain, leaves no longer droop. I can smell the earth.
rain
Partly cloudy and cool. After yesterday evening’s brief rains, the happiness of the plants in my yard is nearly palpable. Formerly desiccated bergamot blossoms have swollen back into bloom.
The edge of a small storm an hour past sunrise brings another shower and a restless breeze. From the treetops, the sound of nestlings begging to be fed.
Breezy and cool. The briefest of showers comes tapping on the roof. A tall dame’s rocket sways in front of the porch, all its flowers converted into needle-thin pods.
Low clouds trailing drizzle settle into the trees, where a wood thrush and a wood pewee are calling. From the wet meadow, an indigo bunting’s bone-dry song.
Rain easing off from a dawn storm. The peony buds look almost ready to open. A raincrow croons.
Rain and fog shut out all sounds from the valley; a gobbling turkey and a pair of pileated woodpeckers are the loudest things. A titmouse sheltering in the lilac shakes the rain from his wings.
Gloomy and damp, with a shimmer of mizzle. The distant boom of dynamite at the quarry. A catbird improvises a few melodic lines. A breeze springs up.
An hour past sunrise, an opossum is out hunting earthworms pushed out of their burrows by the all-night rain. She keeps pausing to raise her snout and sniff the air like a connoisseur.
Steady rain. A gnatcatcher flutters to find breakfast on the undersides of leaves, then retreats to the shelter of the lilac to shake the water off. A chipmunk runs under my chair to eat one seed at the far end of the porch.
Gloomy sunrise, with a cloud snagged on the treetops, leaking rain. A titmouse takes advantage of a lull in the chorus to hype his own claim. A tanager’s plucked string.
Gentle rain. The intense green of new leaves everywhere but inside the ring of fencing around a tulip tree that appeared in my yard during the pandemic like a blessing. Its buds show no sign they’ll ever open again. I don’t know why.
Cloudless at sunrise, with rain still clinging to the grass. Tree leaves are on average half open now, making the woods’ edge half screen, half wall.
Under a white sky, the rambling old white lilac is beginning to bloom. Half an hour past sunrise, the first, tentative raindrops on the roof.