Slower essays that follow the seasons a little further from the back door.
The yard tells me different things now than it did a decade ago, and I have been trying to put my finger on the difference. The birds are mostly the same. The trees are mostly the same. The structure of the year is mostly...
The first hummingbird of the year showed up at the feeder at 6:18 in the evening on a Sunday in early May. I had put the feeder out a week earlier, on the conservative side of the arrival window, and had checked it every...
The first warbler wave of the spring came through the back hedge on a Friday morning in mid-April. I was at the kitchen window watching the feeder, half-paying attention to the cardinals, when a flash of yellow at the edge of my vision pulled...
The first robin of the year on the actual lawn arrived at 6:42 in the morning on Tuesday. I am being specific because I had been waiting for it, and the time matters less than the date but I will record both. Robins are...
The first song sparrow of the year sang at 5:47 in the morning on a Thursday in late February. I noted the time because I had been awake for nearly an hour, sitting by the open kitchen window with coffee, and the morning had...
By the first week of February the days are gaining nearly two minutes of daylight every twenty-four hours. The number sounds small. It is not. Two minutes a day, compounded across two weeks, comes out to almost half an hour by the middle of...
There was three inches of new snow on Monday night and by Tuesday morning the yard looked like a small museum. Tracks ran everywhere, none of them mine, and most of them were from animals I had not seen with my own eyes in...
I was up before five on Monday, not on purpose. The cold woke me. The thermostat had not yet kicked over to its morning setting and the bedroom was a few degrees lower than usual, and once I was awake I was awake. I...
Late winter feels like nothing is happening. It is the part of the year I have come to like best.