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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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beetles

August 31, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Humid, overcast and cool. I study the flamboyant gestures of certain meadow plants already more than half-way dead. A fat beetle flies past.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles
July 24, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Mid-morning, and a wood thrush lands in the walnut tree next to the driveway to sing a few bars. A net-winged beetle flies past.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles, black walnut, netwing beetle, wood thrush
May 16, 2020 by Dave Bonta

A brown thrasher’s jazz echoes off the barn. In the clear plastic hummingbird feeder, a lampyrid beetle takes a very long time to drown.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles, brown thrasher
July 16, 2016 by Dave Bonta

A rabbit trots up the road, rounds the bend and continues past the house like the bearer of urgent news. A beetle with red elytra sails by.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles, cottontail
August 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Between showers, a shallow, orange V careens through the cherry’s dead limbs. Mating craneflies? No, a large beetle with orange elytra.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags beetles, cherry tree

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On This Day

  • April 27, 2025
    The sun climbs through blossoming oaks whispery with wind. Pileated woodpeckers exchange volleys of thunder. A downy woodpecker rattles like a beggar with a cup.
  • April 27, 2024
    Under a white sky, the rambling old white lilac is beginning to bloom. Half an hour past sunrise, the first, tentative raindrops on the roof.
  • April 27, 2022
    Cloudy and cold. One of the local redtails is hunting along the woods’ edge, flying from branch to branch​, head swiveling all about.
  • April 27, 2021
    Overshadowed by the sprawling French lilac like an opening act, the old bridal wreath bush keeps sending out white sprays.
  • April 27, 2019
    Bright and cold. The wind sounds different from the last time it blew this hard, more hush and rustle—tiny new leaves’ ambitious whispers.

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.

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

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