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Heavily overcast at sunrise. A screech owl trills up on the ridge, answered by a trill from down along the road. Moments later, the first patter of rain.
The Morning Porch
Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
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Cool and clear, with bluebird and cardinal song. The leaves of the tulip tree sapling in my yard are nearly white with dew. I grease my boots.
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Long-sleeve weather at sunrise. A female hummingbird hovers in front of me, then on either side, as if trying to recall where she knows me from.
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Cool and breezy, with everything damp from another rainy night. An indigo bunting sings a few bars and falls silent. An jewelweed stalk still sways from a hummingbird s visit.
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Breezy and cool. The sun glimmers through thin clouds, prompting a Linne s cicada to call—that stuttering buzz. A bluebird sings up by the shed.
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Up late after being woken by a storm in the night. At mid-morning, the sun breaking through thin clouds, everything drips and glistens. A low thrum of crickets. The catbird scolds from the depths of a spicebush.
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Dawn thunderstorm moving off by sunrise, which a single crow heralds from the dead top of a locust. The first hummingbird arrives at the jewelweed before the rain has quite stopped. Another storm rumbles in the west.
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Overcast and cool. The mid-morning quiet is broken by a fight between titmice, the two protagonists going at each other all around the yard, followed by a noisy chorus of other titmice and chickadees.
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A yellow walnut leaf spins as it falls, just ahead of the rain—another passing shower. Blades of grass tremble as they re struck. The Carolina wren keeps singing up by the garage.
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A mourning dove calls from out of the fog, high-pitched and hesitant, as if just learning how to sing. A flower fly is licking my laptop where I rest my wrist.
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Thin fog forms as the rising sun begins warming the humid air and rain-soaked vegetation. I look for the half moon, still high overhead, in a large patch of blue.
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Cloudy and humid, with a steady stream of goldfinch and Carolina wren chatter. The sun appears through a hole in the clouds and multiple holes in the forest canopy to strike my face, summoning the demon of a sneeze.
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Cold and clear, with dew dripping from the sun-struck roof. The dying lilac is re-greening with bindweed: ladders of heart-shaped leaves. In the woods, between sunbeams, a pewee s bent note.
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Breezy, cool, and very damp. A fledgling chipping sparrow at the woods edge chirps nearly non-stop, pausing only when the sun comes out for a few seconds.
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A shower tapering off into birdsong. The tulip tree sapling in my yard dances in a light breeze, beads of rain sliding across its leaves but holding on. The sky darkens for another shower.
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Cool and still, with a white sky and feeble sun. The jewelweed in the dripline of the porch has grown tall enough that I can see as well as hear the occasional hummingbird visitor, sipping nectar from bright orange goblets. At the other end of the yard, all the lilac leaves are turning brown.
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Clear, cool, and breezy—a week to the day after our last dry high. Six crows sit on dead branches atop the two tallest locust trees in the yard. One minute past sunrise, they look all around, shift on their perches, and take flight.
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An hour after sunrise the sky darkens again. At the first close rumble of thunder, a fawn leaps up out of the meadow and dashes into the woods.
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Cool and humid at dawn. I open my laptop to draw the mosquitoes away from my head with a glowing screen. The cardinal begins to sing.
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Sunny and cool. I happen to spot a moment of tenderness between hummingbirds: he buzzing back and forth a few inches from her perch in the eastern red cedar, she tilting her head back for a lightning-fast meeting of tongues.
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Overcast and cool. The aspen sapling in my yard is wound around with bindweed, I notice, and I spend a few minutes removing it—unwinding, as it were. The leaves tremble as only an aspen can do.
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Another clear, autumnal morning, with the temperature around 12C. The grinder at the quarry is having its breakfast of limestone. I marvel at the flies coming to life as the sun strikes.
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Clear and cold at sunrise. The dawn chorus is down to field sparrow, common yellowthroat and goldfinches. Distant crows. A truck jake-breaking through the gap. A red-eyed vireo starts up.
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Overcast and cool. A rain shower comes rustling through the grass as a pileated woodpecker drums up on the ridge. I crush a mosquito, but not before she has bequeathed to me her itch.
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Overcast and cool. Here and there, black walnut leaves are beginning to yellow. A deer foraging at the woods edge breaks into a trot to try to escape her flies.
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Cool and clear, with sound out of the east: the beeping of quarry trucks and a loud scraping of metal on rock as the sun makes its way through the canopy, prompting a burst of song from a common yellowthroat.
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Cool and clearing after yesterday s storms. A red-bellied woodpecker calls from a dead limb at the top of the tallest black locust, making it sway. Below him on another dead branch, a fledgling is being fed by its mother.
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Breezy and cool, with the smell of smoke a bit diminished. The patter of rain. Three yellow walnut leaves flutter to the ground together. A rumble of thunder.
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Unseasonably cool with the pall of wildfire smoke over the region. It is as thick as a thin mist and burns my throat. But even though their sun is a lurid red, the goldfinches and a common yellowthroat keep singing.
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The sky is white, though the weather app insists it s clear: thick haze from wildfires far to the north, I think. Goldfinches dominate the morning soundtrack, beginning to nest just as many of the migrants are wrapping it up.