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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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September 20, 2025

Dave Bonta September 20, 2025 0

Cloudy and cool. The shed skin of a rat snake has blown off the back roof and dangles in the branches of a walnut. In the next tree over, a gray squirrel walks to the end of a limb, sniffing each walnut, and picks the one at the very end.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged black snake, black walnut, gray squirrel

September 19, 2025

Dave Bonta September 19, 2025 0

Sun through thin cirrus. Half an hour of a hawk hunting the yellow woods and I have yet to catch a glimpse, tracking its movement only by squirrel and jay scold-calls.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged blue jays, clouds, gray squirrel

September 18, 2025

Dave Bonta September 18, 2025 0

Another crystal-clear morning. The roar of traffic from over the ridge dies down as the air warms, leaving the jeers of jays and the high whistles of waxwings.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged blue jays, cedar waxwing, I-99

September 17, 2025

Dave Bonta September 17, 2025 0

Cloudy and cool with a 100% chance of falling walnuts—though admittedly, some are being dropped by squirrels. A red-bellied woodpecker keeps up an anxious commentry.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged black walnut, gray squirrel, red-bellied woodpecker

September 16, 2025

Dave Bonta September 16, 2025 1

A knife-thin moon fades into the dawn sky. The only cloud huddles in the bottom corner of the meadow, where a phoebe is calling.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged fog, moon, phoebe

September 15, 2025

Dave Bonta September 15, 2025 0

There’s more yellow than ever in the woods’ edge trees, in the spicebushes, in the meadows filled with goldenrod, and now the sun—the opposite of mellow among the yellow leaves of a black birch.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged black birch, fall foliage, goldenrod, spicebush

September 14, 2025

Dave Bonta September 14, 2025 1

Mounds of white snakeroot in the yard glow dimly in the light of a half moon. Orion gets one leg over the ridge before he starts to fade, and the soft calls of migrant thrushes fill the trees.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged moon, white snakeroot, wood thrush

September 13, 2025

Dave Bonta September 13, 2025 0

Under a cacophony of jays, a doe and two fawns with their spots all gone graze just inside the edge of the woods. One does a sudden dance, spinning around to elude a fly.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged blue jays, deer, deerflies

September 12, 2025

Dave Bonta September 12, 2025 0

Sun in the treetops, joined by jays in noisy, acorn-gathering joy. A pewee bends a note. The distant grind of the quarry.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged blue jays, eastern wood pewee, quarry

September 11, 2025

Dave Bonta September 11, 2025 0

Clear and still, with dew dripping off the roof and a pair of phoebes yelling “Phoebe!” at each other. Twenty-four years ago, the sky was just this clear.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged 9/11, phoebe

September 10, 2025

Dave Bonta September 10, 2025 2

Canada geese, a screech owl, some crows, and the inevitable wren sing in the sunrise, the western ridge turning red under a flat-tire moon.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged Canada geese, Carolina wren, crows, moon, screech owl, sunrise

September 9, 2025

Dave Bonta September 9, 2025 0

Another cold sunrise. A distant Carolina wren song prompts the wren roosting atop my heating oil tank to come flying out singing and land in the bracken.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged Carolina wren, sunrise

September 8, 2025

Dave Bonta September 8, 2025 0

Cold, clear, and still at sunrise, with little sign of the more than two million birds who streamed overhead during the moonlit hours aside from a few soft, scattered chirps.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged moon, sunrise

September 7, 2025

Dave Bonta September 7, 2025 0

Partly cloudy and cool at sunrise, with more yellow and orange leaves than I’ve ever seen this early in the fall: not just walnut and black gum but black birch, tulip poplar, and even a few maples, just as our 30 acres of goldenrod approach their peak of bloom. I’m reminded of the Chinese name for San Francisco: old gold mountain.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged black birch, black gum, black walnut, goldenrod, red maple, tulip tree

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On This Day

  • October 4, 2024
    More clouds than sun. A smell of woodsmoke. Stillness haunted by the distant sounds of wheels and engines.
  • October 4, 2023
    Half moon high overhead at 5:00, half-illuminating the ground fog and darkening the shadows into which walnuts thud down.
  • October 4, 2022
    How can it be so yellow out and yet so cold? But the winter birds sound happy: chickadees, nuthatches, a red-bellied woodpecker.
  • October 4, 2020
    A shimmer of moisture in the air, interrupted here and there by an actual raindrop. The roof drips. It’s cold. The lurid colors appall.
  • October 4, 2018
    Mid-morning, and the trees still glisten from the dawn fog. A breeze sends hundreds of birch leaves swirling out into the meadow.

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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