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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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chestnut oak

April 25, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Under a monochrome cloud cover, all the earth tones of blossoming oaks and birches, catkins alive to the lightest brush of a breeze.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black birch, black oak, chestnut oak, clouds, red oak, scarlet oak, scrub oak, wind
October 31, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Cold and mostly clear. A pileated woodpecker riot of one vents its fury in a glowing, golden canopy of chestnut oaks.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chestnut oak, fall foliage, oaks, pileated woodpecker

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On This Day

  • March 5, 2025
    Rain. The stone-wall chipmunk races across the yard and disappears into the woods. The rattle of my metal roofs drowns out everything but a train…
  • March 5, 2024
    Dripping at dawn has thickened into steady rain by the time I get out of the shower. The robins, cardinals, woodpeckers and wrens seem barely…
  • March 5, 2023
    Clouds beginning to clear by 8:00. A gray squirrel with a black walnut between her teeth is followed by three others through the treetops.
  • March 5, 2022
    A leaden sky at sunrise, but an hour later, the sun glimmers through thinning clouds. Cardinal and titmouse song. The smell of bare dirt.
  • March 5, 2021
    Sunny but cold. The woods-edge chipmunk scuttles back and forth. Tips of dead grasses hanging into the stream have new feet of ice.

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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