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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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black cherry

July 18, 2010 by Dave Bonta

A tiger swallowtail is laying eggs on the lilac and black cherry, dabbing each leaf with the tip of her abdomen, wings fighting the breeze.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black cherry, lilac, tiger swallowtail butterfly
August 20, 2008 by Dave Bonta

In the wild black cherry limb that hangs over the entrance to the trail up the ridge, red clumps of stems, a squirrel getting its breakfast.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black cherry, gray squirrel
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On This Day

  • September 24, 2025
    Rain in widely scattered drops, a light seasoning over everything. It intensifies; a half-molted walnut tree begins leafleting the yard. It tapers off. A squirrel chisels open a nut.
  • September 24, 2024
    Rainy and cold. The tall goldenrod heads are bowed, flowering downward. A squirrel’s keening alarm for a hawk.
  • September 24, 2023
    Cold wind and rain, belied by all the cheerful yellow starting to move from the goldenrod up into the trees at the woods’ edge.
  • September 24, 2022
    A couple of cold nights and the yellow has spread like a contagion through the birches. A squirrel hangs down among the green walnuts.
  • September 24, 2021
    Clear and cold. I see that the stiltgrass stems have all turned color in the yard—a chaos of feathery green threaded through with red.

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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