The Morning Porch

Cold and clear with heavy frost.

Clear and still, the yard silvery with frost.

Overcast and cold.

Yellow leaves falling in the fog.

The rising sun appears through new holes in the forest understory just after it tops the ridge.

Warm and breezy at sunrise.

Soft sunlight through high atmospheric haze.

Blue holes open and close in the clouds.

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.

Clear but not as cold.

Clear, cold, and loud with highway noise due to an inversion layer.

The coldest morning of the autumn so far, but no frost.

More clouds than sun, with walnut trees undressing in the wind, and the leaves on the porch turning over like restless sleepers.

Overcast at dawn.

Cold and clear before dawn.

Breezy and warmish with a few thin, high clouds.

Heavily overcast skies prolong the lingering darkness till well past sunrise, but eventually the duetting screech owls and the all-night migrants softly calling from the woods’ edge fall silent, the crows disperse, and the wren, one imagines, must be off…

Sunny and still at mid-morning, with backlit leaves at the woods’ edge looking even yellower than they are.

Overcast and still.

Overcast and still.

Breezy and cool, with occasional outbreaks of sunshine.

Cool and mostly clear, with a wind that keeps the shadows in motion—and the blue jays, too.

Clear and cold.

Clear and cold, with an inversion layer bringing quarry and highway sounds out of the east.

Breezy and cold, with the last few clouds moving off by 9:00: a morning for blue jays and the random marimba-sound of acorns dropping onto rocks and logs.

Drizzle thinning into wind-blown mist by mid-morning.

A gloomy morning, except for the wren: the dull mechanical songs of the quarry, the low cloud ceiling, the cold breath of autumn making leaves tremble on their stems.

Off and on rain and the sporadic crashes of falling walnuts.

Overcast and quiet.

Overcast and cool.

An hour after the last raindrops, wet leaves glisten as the sun glimmers through thin clouds.

Sunny and cool at midmorning, with the smell of woodsmoke drifing up from the valley.

Cold and clear at dawn.

Cool and mostly clear at mid-morning.

After all-night rain, most of the stiltgrass in the meadow has fallen over, and many of the white snakeroot heads are bent low.

Overcast and cool.

A cool morning with the sky mostly clear and sound out of the east: the limestone quarry’s reverse-chirping trucks, muffled clanks and booms.

Overcast but bright.

Overcast and cool, with showers of yellow black walnut leaflets in the slightest breeze.

A screech owl trilling in the half-dark sounds thinner and more uncertain than usual—a juvenile, perhaps?

Sun glistening in the treetops.

The streak of a meteor below the crescent moon doesn’t reach the thin ground fog.

A white sky at mid-morning beginning to glow as the clouds thin, while below in the meadow the white snakeroot is beginning to bloom.

Overcast and cool.

Daybreak comes in a lull between storms.

Everything drips from rain in the wee hours.

Humid, overcast and warm.

At least half the leaves on the walnut trees in my yard have turned yellow now, still glistening from a shower at dawn.

Overcast and cool.