Notes of natural history (and personal history) create edges, corners, beginnings and endings, observations that ask for definition, for connection, for status, describing points or plateaus in the motion of this village around the sun that give the illusion or the feeling (are they the same thing?) of stability and quiet, movement held back for this hiatus, this acme of the season.
Journal, July 27, 2000
 

EPHEMERIS 

     The Blackberry Moon waxes through its second quarter this week, becoming completely full on August 5 at 7:55 p.m. A partial eclipse of the full moon will be visible at moonrise.

     August takes an hour and a quarter from the length of the day, but even though the night grows longer, the percentage of possible sunshine per day increases to the highest of the year.

     The motion of Earth around the sun brings white snakeroot, boneset, clearweed, ragweed and jumpseed into bloom, loosens black walnut leaves and buckeye fruits, reddens stonecrop, tells hummingbirds and meadowlarks to begin migration, tells katydids and crickets to sing.

     Venus is in Gemini throughout August, continuing to shine as the morning star in the east. Mars remains in Taurus, coming up after midnight and coming overhead by dawn. Jupiter stays in Capricorn, setting in the west after 12:00 a.m. Saturn, in Leo, becomes visible in the east near sunrise.

JOURNAL

Like the zen of absences and the zen of spaces between sounds, the zen of unconnected events, of events out of apparent context, creates an emptiness that is both expectant and complete.

    Yesterday, one loud cardinal call at 5:17 a.m, then silence. Light rain and mild, then harder rain, cool in the 70s, throughout the day. The pond and the birdbath have filled, at least two inches of precipitation. The bamboo is bent over from all the water. The artichokes are sagging. The day lilies are bedraggled.

     Between the time I filled the bird feeders after sunrise and the time I took the garbage out in back an hour later, something killed a bird under the tallest feeder. Feathers were scattered all around, small as well as long feathers, some with white tips, maybe from a young jay.

     Was the hunter a cat or the neighborhood hawk? The violence of the scene suggested the latter. Then when I came out again around noon, all the feathers were gone, the ground completely clean. Squirrels or birds gathering material for nests? Birds burying their dead?

     Gossamer webs in the grass this morning, heavy, autumnal fog and dew. I saw cricket hunters, great black wasps with long, thing abdomens, and so I know crickets have emerged and are growing in the garden. They should be singing as July comes to an end, everything connected.

     In the alley, the first tall coneflowers have opened for August, the winterberries and privet berries are becoming prominent. A shower of black walnut leaves came down from Mateo’s tree as I walked along beside the chicory. I noticed the first pokeweed berries turning purple.

    This evening, I talked to my sister Maggie in Madison, Wisconsin. I told her about the feathers, and she said she had seen something strange, too: dozens of small toads, maybe half an inch long, crossing the road when she took her afternoon walk. The zen of unconnected events, I told her.