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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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April 12, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Wind throbs in the treetops; the birdcall app thinks it’s a drumming grouse. Juncos twitter from the lilac, which has just burst its buds—a green apparition against the brown woods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags juncos, lilac, wind
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On This Day

  • August 9, 2025
    Clear and cold at dawn. The nearly full moon gutters among the trees. A screech owl trills with a rising intonation, which feels like some kind of omen.
  • August 9, 2024
    Steady rain with a bit of a breeze—the remains of a hurricane that got the wind knocked out of her and lost her eye. At 7:39 the Carolina wren finally pipes up.
  • August 9, 2023
    Clear and cool at sunrise. A phoebe’s bill snaps on a slow cranefly. From high overhead, the tolling of a bell soon turns into raven croaks.
  • August 9, 2021
    Sunny and humid. The electric whine of annual cicadas ebbs and flows. A hummingbird flies into the forest’s wall of leaves at top speed.
  • August 9, 2015
    Workmen up at the other house: the whine of an annual cicada in the trees alternates with an actual electric saw.

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Related book

Cover of Ice Mountain with a linocut of a big ridgetop tree.

What I do after I sit on the porch. One winter and spring's daily walks distilled into short poems with linocut illustrations by Beth Adams.

Header image: detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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