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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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fog

September 9, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Thick fog slowly infused with sunlight. A squirrel drops pieces of black walnut shell into the dew-soaked weeds.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, fog, gray squirrel
August 29, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Dawn sky striped with red. A small cloud forms in the hollow. The sleepy croaks of a raven: urk, argh. Then the wren and it’s day.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, dawn, fog, raven
August 7, 2022August 7, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Light fog in the treetops. A hummingbird checks the hook where we hung a feeder two years ago, hovers in front of my face, goes back to the hook and looks at me.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, ruby-throated hummingbird
August 6, 2022 by Dave Bonta

The first yellow leaves on the walnuts: it’s late summer already. The fog hides trees and reveals old spiderwebs like messages in invisible ink.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, fog, spiderwebs
August 5, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Rain and fog. A wood thrush sings three times and falls silent. A mourning dove goes on and on.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, mourning doves, rain, wood thrush
June 23, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Fog and mizzle. The usual doe and fawn graze in the springhouse meadow, their ears swivelling above the sodden vegetation.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, rain, white-tailed deer
May 19, 2022 by Dave Bonta

At the top of a dead stalk in the yard, a cup-shaped spiderweb retains drops of fog. A hummingbird circles, taking little sips.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, ruby-throated hummingbird, spiderwebs
May 16, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Fog buzzing and thrumming with bird calls, filling in where half-sized leaves are still working toward the hegemony of green: pea soup indeed.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog
May 4, 2022 by Dave Bonta

A break in the rain. A vole dashes back and forth in the yard. Through the foggy woods, the pale wings of a hawk hunting for breakfast.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, meadow voles, red-tailed hawk
May 2, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Sun through thinning fog—prismatic beads of water twinkling from every twig like the souls of dead leaves. It feels almost masochistic to turn my eyes to my book.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, sunrise
April 7, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Dark and rainy at sunrise; ridgetop lost in fog. Down in the boggy corner of the meadow, one spring peeper is still calling.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, rain, spring peepers, sunrise
December 18, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Steady rain and fog at one degree above freezing: bad luck for our Christmas Bird Count. Over the rain I hear crows, nuthatches, a chickadee.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black-capped chickadee, crow, fog, rain, white-breasted nuthatch
December 11, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Foggy and damp on the last day of regular firearms deer season. The limbs of the old crabapple glow blueish green with lichen.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags crabapple, fog, hunters, lichen, rain
October 30, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Fog. A squirrel is peeling ribbons of bark from the branches of the big tulip tree. And all these years I’ve been blaming porcupines!

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, gray squirrel, tulip tree
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On This Day

  • November 2, 2025
    Clear and cold. The sun pops up—the pea in our daylight-savings shell game. A screech owl begins to trill.
  • November 2, 2024
    A screech owl trilling just before sunrise sets the small birds off. The forsythia at the woods’ edge is once again yellow. The clouds turn red.
  • November 2, 2023
    25F at sunrise. A ruffed grouse—the first I’ve seen since last winter—flushes from under the lilac. Perhaps the population is beginning to recover from West Nile Virus? I relish the small thunder of its wings.
  • November 2, 2022
    Sun through a scrim of cloud. From within a flame-leaved barberry bush, the crisp ticking of a junco.
  • November 2, 2021
    Two degrees above freezing with a dull gray sky—very Novemberish. Except the trees aren’t bare, the oaks yet to reach their peak of color.

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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