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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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dame’s-rocket

June 12, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Breezy and cool. A brown moth flutters into the last of the dame’s-rocket. Sunlight glints on the isinglass wings of a cicada heading for the treetops.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cicadas, dame's-rocket, moths, periodical cicadas
May 19, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Breezy and cool. A pileated woodpecker hops along a log fallen into the meadow, her scarlet crest bobbing among the dames’-rocket.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, pileated woodpecker, wind
June 9, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Breezy and cool. The briefest of showers comes tapping on the roof. A tall dame’s rocket sways in front of the porch, all its flowers converted into needle-thin pods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, rain
June 10, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Breezy and clear. A deer steps out of the woods, grunting softly to collect her fawn, who comes leaping through the purple pom-poms of dame’s-rocket.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, deer
May 29, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Memorial Day. The dame’s-rocket lining the driveway is at its height of purple. A hen turkey at the woods’ edge clucks and calls. Summer’s here.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, wild turkey
November 7, 2021 by Dave Bonta

A scrap of hornets’ gray paper by my chair. Sunlight catches a dead dame’s-rocket​ below the porch, seed pods reduced to pure gesture.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, hornets
June 18, 2021 by Dave Bonta

High, hazy clouds dilute the sunlight. A chipping sparrow lands sideways on a tall dame’s-rocket stalk, singing as it bows under his weight.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags chipping sparrow, dame's-rocket
June 1, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Sun through thin clouds. Dame’s-rocket in the meadow keeps growing to extend the bloom: a slowly rising, purple mist.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, dame's-rocket
May 23, 2021 by Dave Bonta

The dame’s-rocket is at its height; my overgrown front yard is the equal of any garden. The catbird seems to concur.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags catbird, dame's-rocket
June 9, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Silver-spotted skippers chase over dame’s-rocket. A catbird balancing on a dead weed stalk plucks a green bug from a blade of grass.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags catbird, dame's-rocket, silver-spotted skipper
May 7, 2017 by Dave Bonta

‪The first dame’s-rocket are coming out: dabs of purple among the banks of winter cress and garlic mustard. Basically, it’s rocket season.‬

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, garlic mustard, winter cress
September 18, 2015 by Dave Bonta

The rising sun illuminates old spiderwebs in the eaves, littered with insect body parts. Below, the flamboyant bones of dame’s-rocket.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, spiderwebs 1 Comment
July 8, 2015 by Dave Bonta

Autumn has come to the dame’s-rocket in the yard, leaves turning orange and burgundy as the seedpods yellow like needle-thin fingernails.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket
June 11, 2015 by Dave Bonta

Silver-spotted skippers work the last dame’s-rocket, and a day-time cricket begins to chirp. I slap myself in the chest to kill a mosquito.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, mosquito, skippers
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On This Day

  • December 3, 2024
    A stray snowflake wanders down from the pink clouds, itself still white. Doves flock to the birdseed on my mother’s back porch—the silvery whistles of…
  • December 3, 2023
    Steady rain. An hour past sunrise the sky brightens a little, and the trees in their green sleeves of lichen begin to glow.
  • December 3, 2022
    Cold rain. Four chickadees in a high-speed chase around the yard pause in the lilac for a vociferous exchange of views.
  • December 3, 2021
    Clouds with blue veins and sunrise bellies. Two nuthatches trade harangues. A crow summons other crows to—I’m guessing—a fresh gut pile.
  • December 3, 2020
    Bright sun; the snow on the porch has shrunk to the railings’ shadows. That special word for wind in pines, sough: putting the ow back…

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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