The Morning Porch

February 15, 2019 by Dave Bonta

Drip and chitter: the snow is melting, and up at the other house, the birds must be finding seeds that had been buried beneath the feeders.

August 4, 2025
Clear, cold and still. I can’t stop gazing at the red oak seedling I found in the yard yesterday and immediately caged in a ring of deer fencing, its four jaunty leaves above a sea of invasive periwinkle.
August 4, 2024
Partly cloudy and cool at sunrise, with 97% humidity and very little noise from—I’m guessing—valleys full of fog. A single-engine plane fades into the distance.
August 4, 2023
Cool, humid and overcast. A pair of hummingbirds sit side by side on a bare twig, the male rising and hovering behind the female every few seconds to copulate with a decorousness one might not have expected from such fierce birds.
August 4, 2022
Cool beginning to another scorcher. A fly goes for a walk down a porch column. The thud of a walnut on the road.
August 4, 2021
Cool and overcast. Goldfinches chitter over the chirr of tree crickets. For ten seconds, two hummingbirds share the bergamot.