This morning when I went outside before today’s dog walk, there was a female house sparrow trapped inside our screened porch. This has happened before, so I knew the same baby-talk you use on a dog works with frightened wildlife, too. The trick is to prop open the porch door then use a broom or umbrella to gently steer the bird, who is flinging herself toward the trees she can see through the screens, toward the house, which is where the door leading outside is.

They say April showers bring May flowers, so what does December rain bring? Today has been unseasonably warm with fog and day-long downpours, but temperatures will plunge below freezing tonight and tomorrow. This morning’s dog walk was sloppy, but tomorrow’s dog walk will be treacherous. In response to these December showers, at least one ornamental holly in our neighborhood is already anticipating spring, sprouting flower buds that will eventually flower and fruit.

This morning, I finally caught a glimpse of the yellow-bellied sapsucker that has been calling for the past few weeks from the line of pines that fringe our backyard. To my ear, sapsuckers sound like squeaky dog toys, so they are difficult to ignore…but they are also shy, scooting out of sight when you look for them. I often wonder what non-birders think when they hear squeaking sounds coming from the trees: is that a bird?

This afternoon when I went to the library for my weekly writing time, I revisited the chapter I was stuck on last week. For the record, I’m still stuck, but the nightmarish tangle I remembered from last week looked a little less hopeless today. As I took inventory of what I’ve written so far, I realized what this current chapter lacks.

Today was gray, so this morning’s dogwalk task was to find a spot of color. Some spots of color are naturally occurring, like berries on a bush or fruit on a tree. Others are intentionally crafted by human hands, like a colorful rock planted at the head of a trail popular with joggers and dogwalkers alike.

This afternoon, after returning some items to the Boston College bookstore, I walked the stone labyrinth next to Burns Library. It’s been more than ten years since I blogged this same labyrinth after accepting an adjunct teaching gig at Boston College to supplement my part-time position at Framingham State. Back then, I’d been teaching at various New England colleges for twenty years, a meandering career that started when I was a graduate student at Boston College in the 1990s.

Last night I dreamed J and I were walking in a residential neighborhood somewhere tropical. In someone’s front yard, we saw a multi-trunked tree with peeling red bark. On the main trunk, we saw a half dozen large iguanas clinging in a line, head to tail. They were motionless as if trying to blend in, but their greenish-gray skin stood out against the tree’s red bark.

It’s Thursday, so once again I went to the library this afternoon to work on the book-length collection of essays I’m trying to write. I’ve drafted four chapters and now am stuck on the fifth, repeating a process that has become a familiar cycle. You start each chapter with a general theme and a loose cluster of associated ideas. You sift through things you’ve already written, copying and pasting bits of blog posts and journal entries into a single document, and you draft ideas that are in your head but have never found their way to the page.

This morning I started reading Pachinko, a sprawling historical novel by Min Jin Lee that received rave reviews when it was published in 2017. Although it’s a long book, I suspect I’ll read it quickly, as I’m already engaged in the story even though I’ve barely started. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, but when I start a new book I can detect almost immediately whether I will be well-tended as a reader.

We got a dusting of snow overnight, just enough to make it slightly slippery underfoot. I wore rainboots to walk the dog this morning, and hiking boots for a daytime outing into Boston and back. We got just enough snow to make for good photos, a fresh coating of snow refreshing everything. Flower buds and berries and Christmas lights all look better with a dusting of snow. Even trash looks better covered rather than bare.

I’ve spent much of today grading final papers, a task I’ll continue into tomorrow and the days that follow. Alongside grading, I have a to-do list devoted to Christmas prep, with cards to send, gifts to wrap, and cash tips to hand out. This is how my days and weeks pass: they are a series of to-do lists, with each obligation following another.

The English language learner I’ve been tutoring these past few months is finishing her first semester of grad school, so over her academic break we’re going to work our way through Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, an iconic book I somehow have never read. When I told my learner I’m not a big fan of grammar rules, she laughed: “But you’re a writing professor!” Yes, guilty as charged.

Yesterday morning was gray and monochromatic; this morning was sunny and clear. On Friday, it was 11 degrees and windy when I walked the dog, and that day acclimated me to yesterday and today’s“milder” temperatures, which have been below freezing, but not frigid. I stand by my claim that the most trying thing about New England winters isn’t the cold but the lack of color, gray days hitting harder than cold ones.

On December afternoons, when the precious light of winter slants just so, I automatically think of my favorite Emily Dickinson poem. There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – I’m no expert at interpreting Dickinson; on the odd occasions when I’ve taught any of a number of her poems, I’ve used the word “ambiguity” more than any one person should.

Some of my first-year students from warm places have been eagerly awaiting their first New England snow.  I don’t think the messy slop that has been falling (and largely melting) all day is what they had in mind.  

Today has been a gray day, with the heavy, leaden feeling that normally presages snow. Right now, after dark, it is raining, proving all my weather instincts wrong.

Thanksgiving is over, and there is a pause before the frenetic business of Christmas and the New Year. During this brief break, you’ll sometimes see a remnant of Halloween past, like a forgotten black cat creeping on the sunlit edge of someone’s front yard.

The best way to describe New England in late November is this: the light is short, but the days are long. It’s after 5:30 pm as I type these lines, and it’s been dark for more than an hour. I’ve lived in New England for decades now–longer, in fact, than I lived in the Midwest of my childhood–but the early darkness of fall-into-winter still startles me every year.

J and I have had an intentionally quiet Thanksgiving, venturing out to walk the dogs but otherwise staying close to home, as content as a cat basking in morning light.

It’s after dark on Thanksgiving Eve, and I’m trying to finish grading one of several batches of student papers. Every year, Thanksgiving break gives me a chance to catch up with paper-grading, but every year, I make a point of not grading papers on Thanksgiving itself. Tomorrow, I’ll read and write in my journal, and I might start addressing this year’s Christmas cards.

If you want to take an afternoon walk in New England in November, you need to do it early, as it is dark by 5:00 pm. Yesterday at Mount Auburn Cemetery, the day’s last light ignited some trees in scarlet and orange while others were drab and leaden. Luckily for me, groundcrews hadn’t yet removed the thick carpet of leaves underneath a ginkgo near the cemetery entrance, each leaf as golden as a coin.

Decomposers such as turkey tail fungus don’t care if a tree falls in the forest or at the edge of a suburban yard. They’ll do their dirty work of breaking down dead wood either way.

My first-year students from warmer places often ask me when it starts snowing here in New England, and my answer is always “It depends.” When I first moved here, we could reliably expect snow in November and December, but now that the climate is warming, some years we don’t get plowable snow until January or February. Again, it depends. Today has been an indecisive day, with frost and sunshine in the morning, flurries and heavy clouds in the afternoon, and wintry mix now that it’s dark. It’s difficult to predict the weather in New England because on any given day, we could have so many different kinds.

Every morning when I walk the dog, I take random pictures of whatever’s blooming, ripening, or lying underfoot. When I get home, these photos automatically upload to my Flickr camera roll, then I choose the ones I want to make public. I do this every morning, rain or shine, even on days that don’t feel photogenic. On some days, my morning photos are bright, sharp, and shiny, and on other days, they are muted, muddled, and muddy.

This morning my five-year diary told me something my blog did not: two years ago today, my Mom entered hospice, and I spent the following weeks trying to finish my semester before she died. Time is odd and elastic. In some ways, it feels like an eternity since my Mom was alive; in other ways, the numb strangeness of anticipatory grieving feels like it happened yesterday.