The leaves on the sapling tulip tree are already big enough to blow backwards. A tanager’s plucked-string call. It begins to sleet.
sleet
Sunday October 18, 2015
The thermometer’s big arrow points straight at 0°C. It was too windy for frost, but fallen red maple leaves cradle white grains of ice.
Saturday October 17, 2015
Sun shining through rain: to the small birds in the treetops, the porch must be ringed in a rainbow. Then it turns to sleet.
Saturday January 03, 2015
A pause in the sleet. It’s plenty cold enough for snow, but all we get is this glassy grit. A pileated woodpecker whinnies up on the ridge.
Sunday November 16, 2014
A whispering in the dried grass: not wind but sleet. A hawk materializes like a magician’s handkerchief and flies off through the trees.
Wednesday February 05, 2014
Freezing rain on a bed of sleet: like listening to thousands of pins dropping. A nuthatch ascends a tree head-first like a brown creeper.
Monday January 06, 2014
Freezing rain and sleet have turned the snow as rough as a lizard’s skin. A wren hops through the lilac, poking at the ground with his bill.
Sunday December 29, 2013
Steady rain. The corners of the yard still glisten dully with the pellet ice that fell in the night.
Sunday December 08, 2013
At mid-morning, before the snow starts its quiet infiltration, before the hard knuckles of sleet, the distant hysteria of a mob of crows.
Friday February 22, 2013
A rattle of sleet gives way to the hush of snow, then the tapping of freezing rain, then back to snow. A squirrel never stops its scolding.