Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
“October’s bright blue weather” continues. As it warms up, I take great, greedy breaths of the autumn air, laden with geosmin and other earthy compounds associated with fermentation and decay. A mid-morning blast from the limestone quarry two miles away shakes the house.
Sun strikes the porch roof and it begins to drip, even as two patches of frost linger in the yard. A blue jay in the crown of a large scarlet oak manages to convince the bird app that it’s a hawk.
With my hearing back after a day of earwax removal, I listen to white-throated sparrows singing in two different keys, the sun’s silent wheel progressing alone on its wide blue road.
Cold and clear with heavy frost. A small hawk hurtles over the house as crows call in the distance. The western ridge turns brick-red with sunrise.
Clear and still, the yard silvery with frost. Each morning the woods are more open, the patches of sky more numerous. The sun-flooded forest of winter doesn’t seem so far away now.
Overcast and cold. A white-throated sparrow sings in the wind. Kinglets forage, fluttering and wheezing, through the golden crown of a black birch.
Yellow leaves falling in the fog. A chipmunk runs onto the porch, sees me and stops short, with a walnut larger than its head between its teeth.
The rising sun appears through new holes in the forest understory just after it tops the ridge. Crows and jays are in an uproar over a young peregrine falcon, who hangs around for a couple of hours, periodically giving chase to its most obnoxious persecutors until they all find better things to do elsewhere.
Warm and breezy at sunrise. One katydid is still calling, as if reluctant to see the end of what could be the katydids’ last big party night of the year. Two yellow walnut leaves land on my laptop.
Soft sunlight through high atmospheric haze. Dew drips from the roof. The forest glows orange and yellow as spring peepers call from the leaf litter.
Blue holes open and close in the clouds. Gray squirrels continue to sound the alarm for a long-gone hawk as the tulip sapling in my yard dances in the wind.
Hard, steady rain since the wee hours, but the crows still show up to yell from the top of the tallest tree at what would be sunrise.
Sun through thin clouds at mid-morning. A suppressed burble of wren-song from the woods’ edge. Yellow leaves festoon the reddening stiltgrass in the yard.
Clear but not as cold. The shadows of three silent, low-flying geese cross the porch as a larger flock to the south provides the soundtrack of goose music.