Brand New.

Cool and gray to start and then a long slow warmup all through the afternoon, and then once it started raining, it felt like we picked up ten degrees in about an hour. We've got a front stalled out right over the top of us, or near about, and a cold front riding in behind that, hinging off a low that's up in Virginia, and we've got another low hanging off the coast, and still another out there somewhere to our west. They want rain and more rain. And goddamn I want that too except that the robin nesting in the azalea out front hatched her babies today, or at least two of the three -- we do not yet have visual confirmation that the third finished making his/her way out of the egg -- and though I know robins have worked for, oh, plenty of decades learning how to get through babies hatching in the rain, the azalea is all leaning over, flowers heavy with all the water they're holding, and she's just out there trying to keep them dry, and every now and then when there's a break in the rain she flies off to get a worm or something, and they drag their necks off each other -- it's difficult to believe something that looks so unready for the world could possibly be ready for the world --and roll their heads around and finally get them pointed upwards and they open their mouths wide like some kind of funnel or a pocket and then what is called for, really, is just to stand at the window and work your way through the endless list of things you cannot, under any circumstance, do to help.

I replanted the front garden today. 200ish impatiens. I wanted to bring each and every worm I turned out over to the nest.


Pairs of robins everywhere today — and new activity at the downspout nest, too, so I've been wondering of today isn't something like North Carolina Piedmont Robin Hatching Day or somesuch holiday, and even though a good part of my head says that can't be, just like an azalea on the north side of the house won't bloom until several days after an east- or south-facing one, still I can't help but think that perhaps however many weeks ago some ancient internal switch went off in all our robins all over town and that was it; they all chose each other and then they all nested and then they all laid at the same time, and they all hatched today. It was odd: robins aren't unusual, but today— today they were all of them paired back up again.

Robins fledge in 12-14 days. To imagine these things flying in two weeks is all but impossible. Quarter-inch of rain at least. I haven't checked again recently. Two new robins at least. It got dark, so we still can't say about the third.