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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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August 8, 2025

Dave Bonta August 8, 2025 0

Mid-morning and the sun is just struggling free of clouds and/or smoke. A chicken cackles in the distance. Annual cicadas exchange raspy notes.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged chickens, cicadas, clouds

August 8, 2024

Dave Bonta August 8, 2024

Drizzle. A family of wrens make the sprawling old lilac sing and shimmy.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged Carolina wren, lilac, rain

August 8, 2023

Dave Bonta August 8, 2023

Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged clouds, fall foliage, rain, wind

August 8, 2022

Dave Bonta August 8, 2022

Clear but with atmospheric haze, so the sunlight leaking down the trees looks murky behind the goldfinches’ purer yellow.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged American goldfinch, sunrise

August 8, 2021

Dave Bonta August 8, 2021

Walnut leaves have begun to yellow, as leaf miners turn the locust trees brown. A red-eyed vireo warbles on and on.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged black locust, black walnut, fall foliage, leaf miners, red-eyed vireo

August 8, 2015

Dave Bonta August 8, 2015 3

A dragonfly with shimmering, banded wings and an electric blue abdomen lands on a garlic seed-head, falls still and nearly disappears.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged dragonflies, wild garlic

August 8, 2012

Dave Bonta August 8, 2012

A half-grown fawn, no mother in sight, wanders through the foxtail millet and into the woods, its fading spots glimmering in the deep shade.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged deer, foxtail millet

August 8, 2011

Dave Bonta August 8, 2011 1

A honeybee conducts a slow inspection of the porch railing, including my boots. I’m pondering the secret cousinship of wrens and crickets.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged Carolina wren, crickets, honeybees

August 8, 2010

Dave Bonta August 8, 2010

Cool, clear and quiet—a silence that’s part Sunday and part molting season. The Canada thistles too are shedding white fur into the breeze.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged Canada thistle

August 8, 2009

Dave Bonta August 8, 2009

Gone is the persistent “tweet?” of the breeding season: at first light, the towhee’s call falls like a declarative, flat and final.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged towhee

August 8, 2008

Dave Bonta August 8, 2008

At sunrise, a pair of screech owls trill back and forth, one high, one low, as orange-and-purple clouds race overhead.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged screech owl, sunrise

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On This Day

  • August 8, 2024
    Drizzle. A family of wrens make the sprawling old lilac sing and shimmy.
  • August 8, 2023
    Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.
  • August 8, 2022
    Clear but with atmospheric haze, so the sunlight leaking down the trees looks murky behind the goldfinches’ purer yellow.
  • August 8, 2021
    Walnut leaves have begun to yellow, as leaf miners turn the locust trees brown. A red-eyed vireo warbles on and on.
  • August 8, 2015
    A dragonfly with shimmering, banded wings and an electric blue abdomen lands on a garlic seed-head, falls still and nearly disappears.

See all...

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.

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Detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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