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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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box turtle

July 30, 2015 by Dave Bonta

The rain eases off at mid-morning, and once again a box turtle comes out of the woods and marches up the driveway with surprising haste.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags box turtle, rain
July 26, 2015 by Dave Bonta

The box turtle whose territory my house happens to encroach upon sits in the driveway, yellow markings like a road sign in a foreign script.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags box turtle
May 12, 2015 by Dave Bonta

A box turtle plods across the yard, the markings on its shell as bright as fresh graffiti. A bluebird scratches behind his ear like a dog.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, box turtle

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On This Day

  • August 20, 2025
    Rain starts at sunrise and tapers off a half hour later. In its wake: phoebe, pewee, goldfinch, Carolina wren. A cedar waxwing’s whistle.
  • August 20, 2024
    Windy and cold, with the sun in and out of clouds. The Carolina wren’s usual enthusiasm sparks a red-eyed vireo to call exactly once.
  • August 20, 2023
    Another autumnal dawn. A screech owl trills from just inside the woods. Crows head past en route to an angry mob. The fluting of geese.
  • August 20, 2022
    Sun through a scrim of cloud. The first white snakeroot is in bloom. A Linne’s cicada rattles like a bad engine.
  • August 20, 2021
    Cardinal joined by a whippoorwill. The white shapes in the yard turn out to be snakeroot.

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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