Fast-moving clouds crowd the sun. An icy breeze slips down the back of my neck. Two gray squirrels’ paths cross in the treetops, but they show no interest in each other and continue on.
Overcast and cold. When the wind dies down, I hear the nasal calls of nuthatches. The four-year-old tulip tree in my yard has finally lost its last two leaves, but the double-trunked scarlet oak at the woods’ edge clings to its leaves, now a deep burgundy, and if the past is any guide, may hold them for much of the winter. They rattle and hiss.
Gray-headed goldenrod nods in the wind. Blue holes open and close in the clouds. A small troupe of white-throated sparrows goes whistling through the yard.
Rain comes rattling on the roof and rustling in the fresh leaf litter. A raven calls in the distance. Bare walnut tree branches begin to shine.
A few small patches of frost in the yard, their white turning to wet as the sun clears the ridgetop, bleary with cirrus. The monotony of traffic sound is briefly drowned out by a west-bound freight train’s heavy metal.
Cold and loud with noise from the valley. Every time I look up from my book, the sky is different: first lurid with sunrise, then scaled like a fish, then nearly all blue with a blazing sun.
Overcast and cold at first light. The six-point buck is back, stalking through the yard, giving me a long stare as I raise a mug to my lips, but not showing much alarm. The few oaks retaining leaves whisper in the wind.
A classic November morning: cold, gray and blustery, but seasoned with sparrow song. The lilac’s last few green leaves flutter like loose flyers for some long-gone circus.
Clouds in the east briefly matching the rust-red of the threadbare oaks. The muffled drone of NPR voices from my mother’s house. As finch twittering gives way to woodpecker drums, a brisk wind springs up.
Cool and damp. The forsythia at the woods’ edge is yellow again, though this time not from blossoming. Bluebirds and blue jays are calling at the same time, an irrepressible burbling under the jeers.
The old saw “Rain before seven, clear by eleven” might describe this morning, if the holes in the clouds ever stop closing again. It’s humid. The oaks still hold at least half of their leaves, but nearly everything else is down.
A small buck stalks past, his six-point rack held high, minutes before the sun tops the ridge. I can see some cold-weather gnats at the woods’ edge pogoing in the sunbeam. A bluebird up by the barn calls and calls.
Cloudy in the east at sunrise, as the moon’s sideways smile fades overhead. The plaintive piping of white-throated sparrows is interrupted by a song sparrow’s cheery warble.
Sun rising through an increasingly threadbare forest canopy of mellow reds and yellows, all converging on brown: oaks in November. A hunter walks out of the woods in camouflage gray.