It’s cold. Small groups of leaves scurry this way and that. The machine-gun rattle of a downy woodpecker on an especially hard hollow limb.
wind
March 28, 2016
After hard rain in the early hours, the sky is a patchwork of light and dark. The wail of a freight train is faintly audible above the wind.
March 18, 2016
At the woods’ edge, the tulip poplar sprouts a scarlet thorn: pileated woodpecker. A gust of wind drops a dried leaf into my lap.
March 17, 2016
Trees rock and sway in the wind—still the quiet wind of winter, hissing only in the pines. The startled flute of a mourning dove’s wings.
November 20, 2015
Branches clack like arrhythmic castanets in the high wind. A few sunlit snowflakes hurtle past, refugees from who knows what distant cloud.
November 15, 2015
In the Sunday morning silence, I can hear the wind reshuffling fallen leaves half-way up the ridge and the long sighs of the pines.
November 14, 2015
Between bitter gusts of wind, I hear the calls of juncos and nuthatches, chickadees and titmice, a song sparrow singing in the ditch.
November 13, 2015
After a night of high winds, the lilac is more threadbare than ever, and in the crowns of the oaks, only the odd clot of a drey remains.
October 25, 2015
The wind has made the leaves at the end of the porch draw into a circle. A red-tailed hawk soars over the house, flapping to stay aloft.
October 9, 2015
The walnut tree next to the road is stripping in the wind, its leaves flying off in great yellow gusts. The steady ticking of a chipmunk.
October 3, 2015
Cold rain blowing sideways. The walnut trees behind the house have shed their leaves, unveiling a still-heavy ordnance of green orbs.
September 30, 2015
After the rain, a drying breeze, shrinking the wet spots around the leaves strewn across the porch floor. Yellow tips rise. Edges flutter.
September 26, 2015
The black walnut trees shed their leaves into the wind like feathers stripped from the wings of Miltonian angels. The walnuts thunder down.
August 27, 2015
Two compound leaves atop a walnut branch feint and dodge like boxing lobsters in the wind. A syrphid fly makes a close inspection of my leg.