Overcast, windy and cold at dawn. Soft thuds as the black walnut tree releases its ordnance onto the road.
wind
Bleary sun. Tree leaves are all astir, but not by much. Those birds who still sing make it sound perfunctory.
Cool at sunrise with a restless breeze. The big tulip tree at the woods’ edge drops a few more drought-yellowed leaves.
Windy and cool. The pale undersides of leaves turning in unison like shoals of fish. A robin and a tanager trading off.
Wind has blown all the humidity out to sea. The forest is astir with its comings and goings, until I can barely remain seated.
Just past sunrise, a clearing wind. I look up from the Eastern Europe of my book to flame-bellied clouds, the forest all astir.
Five degrees below freezing. The lilac leaves are already big enough to show their backs to the wind. Four white narcissuses bob and sway.
Gauzy curtains of snow falling from the treetops—six inches’ worth—even as more snowflakes start coming down. The wind’s work is never done.
Rainy, breezy and intermittently bright. The zigzag flight of a phoebe finding breakfast above the daffodils.
A flash mob of snowflakes rushing this way and that. Over the sound of water, the wind: all hiss, no hush.
Windy and cold after last night’s freakish warmth. Up in the woods, a large coyote trots across the threadbare snowpack. The wail of a train.
The sun rose before I did, turning every snowbound tree into a gnomon. The tall pines are soughing, though my breath rises straight up.
Windy and overcast at moonset, at dawn. Just when I’m thinking it’s unremittingly bleak, the gray sky acquires the faintest hint of pink.
Patches of blue sky; occasional snowflakes. What appears to be a butterfly fluttering through the treetops must be a dead leaf.