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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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flies

July 15, 2025 by Dave Bonta

I feel like a salamander, slick with moisture from hiking in 98% humidity. The first flies are beginning to buzz about, anticipating the sun burning through the fog.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies, fog 1 Comment
June 13, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Breezy and cool, with the sun guttering in cirrus. Over the course of an hour, I swat an astonishing diversity of small flies and gnats. It’s good to feel wanted, I suppose.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, flies, gnats
May 5, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Some prolonged glimpses of the sun. Gnats circle my head despite the gnatcatcher calling non-stop from the edge of the yard.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags blue-gray gnatcatcher, flies, gnats
August 4, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Cool beginning to another scorcher. A fly goes for a walk down a porch column. The thud of a walnut on the road.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, flies
August 29, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Almost fall. The motherless fawn running out of the woods has lost its spots but not its cloud of flies.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, flies
June 26, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Feet propped up, my trouser legs become new territory for flies. A vulture glides over the forest, its shadow racing up and down the trees.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies, turkey vultures
April 19, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Bright and warm. A squirrel in the lilac drops to the ground for a quick roll, as if scratching an itch. A fat fly moves into the shade.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies, gray squirrel, lilac
March 7, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Cloudless and cool. I wonder idly about the target shooter a couple of miles away, their preferred pronouns. A fly walks the rim of my mug.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies
December 30, 2019 by Dave Bonta

A pause in the rain. Under a dripping cedar limb, two filmy-winged winter insects dance side by side, pogoing like airborne punks.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cedar tree, flies
April 28, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Sun warms the porch; a rising buzz of flies. Each spicebush around the farm is yellowing up on its own schedule, bud to fuzz to frowze.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies, spicebush
February 1, 2018 by Dave Bonta

A few degrees above freezing; the ground’s thin coat of snow already looks mangy. I spot a tiny fly walking purposefully across the porch.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies, snow
November 24, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Despite the temperature—two degrees above freezing—a half dozen small insects dance above a branch at the woods’ edge, back-lit by the sun.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cold, flies
October 13, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Cold and gloomy despite the bright leaves; even the wren sounds querulous. When I look again, the unmoving fly is gone from the wall.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, fall foliage, flies
October 6, 2017 by Dave Bonta

Down-hollow, the nocturnal katydids are already getting started: time is short. A fly on its back treads the air, trying to right itself.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies, katydids
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On This Day

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    Dull gray clouds since well before sunrise, but the cardinal is an engine of cheer. It’s two degrees above freezing. Anything could happen.
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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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