Wind and clouds and the clattering of treetops rocking out of sync. Two squirrels hunting the last unfallen acorns keep climbing into the top branches of a big red oak, hanging by their hind legs to peel their prizes.
red oak
Heavy frost in the yard. A few, faint clouds disappear after sunrise, as squirrels climb high into the wine-red crowns of oaks.
Clear, cold and still. I can’t stop gazing at the red oak seedling I found in the yard yesterday and immediately caged in a ring of deer fencing, its four jaunty leaves above a sea of invasive periwinkle.
Cool, clear and humid at sunrise. I watch a crow family waking up on their roost in an oak, the fledglings softly begging from the adults, who stretch and scratch.
Under a monochrome cloud cover, all the earth tones of blossoming oaks and birches, catkins alive to the lightest brush of a breeze.
Clear and cool at sunrise, with ovenbirds calling in the woods and a red-winged blackbird in the meadow. Two squirrels climb high into the canopy to taste the oak blossoms.
Dawn. High in a red oak crown an acorn lets go, tapping the branches on its way down like a blind man’s cane.
Breezy and cool at mid-morning. A blue jay’s rusty croon in the crown of an oak. The plop of dropped acorns.
A hair above freezing. A pair of jays fresh from their ablutions ascend a flaming birch, gleaning insects on their way to the oaks.
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.
After last night’s rain, the sun keeps not coming out. Up in the woods, a breeze in the top of one red oak makes a sudden shower.
A few, tiny patches of snow linger behind clumps of dead stiltgrass. The sun blazes through the thinning crown of an oak; I start to sneeze.
All the birds are calling and then they’re not. I’m remembering a big oak that stood at the woods’ edge when I was a kid—no trace of it now.
The red and scarlet oaks have finally turned their namesake colors, and the whole ridge shines like a fresh gut pile in the sun.