Rising late, I find the sun already spread out on the leaves like piecemeal linen, shining white, and the forest floor striped with shadows. | Continue reading
Sunrise thunderstorm: the sky darkening just when you least expect it, then the downpour and all the leaves of grass nodding like headbangers as the thunder booms. | Continue reading
Cool and clear, but still with some high-altitude murk. I miss the deep blue of my boyhood summers, the bright sun and dark shadows under the trees. | Continue reading
The second cool morning in a row, but quieter and not quite as clear. A deer looks up at me more with annoyance than alarm and goes back to grazing. | Continue reading
Cool and clear. A female hummingbird keeps hovering in front of my face and chirping, intermittently joined by two others. I am not wearing any bright colors. I’m left wondering what message I’ve f… | Continue reading
Fog at first light. The random percussion of rain dripping off the trees slowly joined by bird calls: pewee, towhee, song sparrow, wren… | Continue reading
Nuthatch scolding a gray squirrel, who scratches himself with a hind leg. The rising sun takes its place among the goldfinches. | Continue reading
A ten-minute shower unmentioned in the forecast. The sky brightens. A tiny white moth circles the yard. | Continue reading
Dawn fog loud with noise from the interstate, thanks to an inversion layer: it’s chilly for July. I don a flannel shirt and soon find myself daydreaming about autumn. | Continue reading
The best way to summon a hummingbird, it seems, is with another hummingbird: as soon as one appears, there’s another to fight with it. A deer sneezes behind the springhouse. | Continue reading
Heavily overcast and still, as if it’s going to rain at any moment. The usual birds saying the usual things. The deep-summer hegemony of green. | Continue reading
Fog lingering into mid-morning. Whatever the crows are up to, it involves a lot of begging sounds. The wild garlic heads are beginning to split. | Continue reading
The catbird mews and warbles, a hummingbird rockets back and forth, but it’s the mosquito’s still, small voice that gets my attention. | Continue reading
Haze before the heat. The tulip poplar sprout in its circle of deer fence is waving its newest Mickey Mouse hands. | Continue reading
Cool enough to seem autumnal, but for the wood thrush and hooded warbler calling from the woods’ edge and the hummingbirds buzzing in the bergamot. | Continue reading
Cool and clear, apart from some high haze; the treetops glow with sunrise. One yellow leaf spirals down. | Continue reading
Clearing after sunrise. A Carolina wren lands briefly on my open book, between two haiku. | Continue reading
Sun through thin clouds. A brief eddy of camphor-like fragrance, as if something has just trampled through a patch of yarrow. | Continue reading
It’s not raining. A hummingbird inspects my bergamot patch—not quite open—and dips into a soapwort bloom before zooming off. | Continue reading
A foggy sunrise. The catbird circles the house, mimicking the Carolina wren on double speed. | Continue reading
A still morning. A half-grown walnut lets go of its branch while I’m looking at it, prompting an odd feeling of guilt. | Continue reading
The bluest sky I’ve seen in weeks. A hooded warbler calls at intervals. A black walnut lands on the road with a surprisingly loud thud. | Continue reading
Cool and humid—enough to muffle almost all valley noise. The sun goes back in. A carpenter bee sizes up the rafters. | Continue reading
Back from the city, wondering how everything could have gotten so much greener and more lush in just four days. The sun comes out. Leaves glisten like wet tongues. | Continue reading
Overcast and breezy, with a strong smell of burning chemicals. Off in the distance, a brown thrasher is singing whatever pops into his head. | Continue reading
Clearing skies after a damp night. A Cooper’s hawk calls from just inside the woods’ edge—a single trill, if that’s what you call it. A ratchet. A round. | Continue reading
Thick fog. The wren sings from the other side of the house, seemingly unconcerned by losing two days’ labor when their unbalanced new nest fell out of the rafters. | Continue reading
A pair of Carolina wrens have mostly completed a nest in the rafters that wasn’t there yesterday morning, seven feet away from my chair. I love the soft sounds they make to each other as they build… | Continue reading
Foggy at dawn for the wood thrush’s solo. The wild garlics are beginning to raise their egret heads. | Continue reading
Rain. A groundhog rummages loudly under the porch. A bumblebee moves to the bright side of a porch column to dry her wings. | Continue reading
My surprise at a rainy morning is only exceeded by my surprise at having nearly slept through it, a gauzy drizzle just beginning to shine. | Continue reading
The sun rising through high-altitude murk isn’t much brighter than the goldfinches chattering in the treetops, less than three hours till the solstice. | Continue reading
Cloudy and cool. I carry an offering of soup bones out to the ravens. A great-crested flycatcher lets loose. | Continue reading
Monday morning: back to the literal grind from the quarry. The red-eyed vireo’s usual spell makes nothing happen. A loose strand of spider silk catches the sun. | Continue reading
The light is still murky and cool at mid-morning as lulls in the avian chorus lengthen. The breeze riffling through walnut leaves. A cowbird’s liquid note. | Continue reading
Sun through thin clouds. A silent crow skims the treetops where a cuckoo coos. Someone’s offsprings beg for more breakfast. | Continue reading
The soft noise of steady rain; birdcalls sound half-submerged. I watch wisps of cloud drift through the yard. | Continue reading
Unseasonably cool at daybreak. Underneath the excited back-and-forth of a redstart and an indigo bunting, the soft calls of a gnatcatcher. | Continue reading
The rains continue. The last peony blossom collapsed in the night, and the last purple iris has opened. Where mowed grass had died, there’s a blush of green. | Continue reading
Rain! That unfamiliar whisper rising to the level of a murmur. And a Carolina wren rushing about, making sure the world knows. | Continue reading
Rising late, I’m in time to see the last cottontail going back under the house for a mid-morning nap. Cuckoos call in the distance. Common yellowthroat. Wood pewee. | Continue reading
Breezy and clear. A deer steps out of the woods, grunting softly to collect her fawn, who comes leaping through the purple pom-poms of dame’s-rocket. | Continue reading
A slight sheen on the leaves at sunrise—what passes for rain these days must’ve fallen. The faintest smell of soil. An ovenbird’s endless lesson. | Continue reading
Peony leaves shriveling from drought even as their antique, cream-white heads still bloom. Ashen skies. A Cooper’s hawk skims the treetops without setting off a single squirrel. | Continue reading
Clear—or what passes for it these days—and cold. The black digger wasp I last saw at dusk hasn’t moved from her spot on the porch column. | Continue reading
A bleary, bloodshot sun in an ash-white sky. Pileated woodpeckers foraging just inside the woods’ edge cackle like sacred clowns. | Continue reading
Cool with thin clouds. Two wood thrushes fly into the woods, dead grass trailing from the leader’s beak. A chipmunk runs under my chair. | Continue reading
Raininess without rain. The peonies remain unbowed. Half-grown bracken fronds in my thin-soiled yard are already turning yellow. | Continue reading