Just as light and weather have assumed new importance in life — since I see so much more of them working at home — so have the sounds I hear outside. Lately this has included sirens, chain saws and howling winds.

You can’t blame the virus for the last two. They come with the season, which is unsettled, changing, one day balmy, the next day frigid. Two nights ago a terrible storm blew up in the wee hours. It sounded like the derecho I remember from years past, with its scream of a freight train barreling down on us, saying “take cover, take cover.” The next day I awoke to the sound of chain saws whirring. Luckily, we were spared this time, but I counted more than a half dozen homes in the neighborhood with downed trees.

This morning I couldn’t tell if what I heard was the lumbering of the garbage truck or another storm howling in from the west. Then I realized that it’s Friday, the new (lone, weekly) trash pickup day. Ah, the relief at this realization. Knowing that it was not another wind storm, knowing that the foe we fight today is “only” the invisible one, the microbe — that it’s not the weather, too.