May 27, 2026

For many years I’ve owned but never read three out of four of Edwin Way Teale’s “Season” books. I knew that I had Spring, and planned on reading in during many Springs but never did, but couldn’t remember which of the remaining I owned whenever I encountered more in used bookstores. By luck I happened to buy a first printing of Wandering Through Winter for 50 cents a couple months ago, and that was in fact the one I was missing. Now I’ve got the set. I also resolved to read them all this year in their proper times, and am a good way through North with the Spring.

I’m looking out of my office window right now at some bleeding hearts, and at the mass of green vegetation that has only taken a few weeks to explode. I can see a large dead branch of a still living white ash tree, and I hope it holds on. We now have several fully dead ashes. A chestnut-sided warbler is singing. That’s usual for our woods, but this year we also have several species that seem to be hanging around and possibly nesting: scarlet tanager, wood thrush, Blackburnian warbler. This, at least by my observation, is unusual in the time we’ve lived here. Some years stand out for an abundance of black-throated blue warblers, or other species, but I’ll never forget being serenaded daily this May by the above-mentioned birds.