After a soggy night, a few more raindrops and then some brightening. A vireo starts up. The lowest branch on the tulip tree has turned yellow.
tulip tree
My three-year-old tulip tree has extended one last, jaunty new leaf for the season. How tall it has grown on this summer’s thunderstorms! Not to mention all the extra CO2 in the air.
Haze before the heat. The tulip poplar sprout in its circle of deer fence is waving its newest Mickey Mouse hands.
A skim of snow overnight; a front has blown in and the birds are so much quieter. But a cold, gray morning is fine for gray squirrel romance: a pair ascend a young tulip tree together, touching often, and descend the adjacent walnut tree, nose to tail.
As cold as yesterday but with orange-bellied clouds and a wind. A tulip tree seed helicopters into the yard and rises up over the house.
Two degrees below freezing and clear at sunrise. A falling tulip tree leaf lands with an audible tick.
Cool at sunrise with a restless breeze. The big tulip tree at the woods’ edge drops a few more drought-yellowed leaves.
Clear sky, sun in the treetops… “Cloudy conditions will continue all day,” my phone admonishes. The big tulip tree releases a yellow leaf.
Sunrise. A squirrel carries a freshly dug-up walnut in its mouth. The tulip tree’s leaves are already big enough to wave like a rave of one.
The tulip trees have burst their buds—a gray-green haze. Hermit thrush in my left ear, thunder in my right.
Clear and cold. Sunlight fills the tall tulip tree, which is shaped like martini glass, from the top down. A woodpecker duets with his echo.
After sunrise, a brief interval of soft light before rain clouds close in. The tulip tree hosts a slow-moving ménage à trois of squirrels.
Fog. A squirrel is peeling ribbons of bark from the branches of the big tulip tree. And all these years I’ve been blaming porcupines!
Cloudy and cold. In the thinning treetops, a squirrel takes a wild leap to lose a suitor. Tulip tree samaras helicopter down.