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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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garlic

July 21, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Cool and partly cloudy. A fledgling wren at the woods’ edge begs to be fed—an interrogatory whine. The mob of feral garlic heads are splitting their hoods.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, garlic
July 10, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Here and there, the bracken in my yard is beginning to turn yellow. A hummingbird buzzes past, pausing to inspect several garlic heads.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bracken, garlic, ruby-throated hummingbird
July 2, 2024 by Dave Bonta

The garlic heads in my yard give pause: a crowd of inverted commas, punctuating wildly. A goldfinch drops by to strip the seeds from an old weed stalk.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American goldfinch, garlic 2 Comments
June 21, 2024 by Dave Bonta

A hazy sunrise for the first full day of astronomical summer. The feral garlics are raising crane’s-bill heads.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags garlic, sunrise
June 24, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Foggy at dawn for the wood thrush’s solo. The wild garlics are beginning to raise their egret heads.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dawn, fog, garlic, wood thrush
July 12, 2022 by Dave Bonta

An hour after sunrise, wild garlic heads still nod. A flower fly hovers in front of my glasses’ right lens. The smell of smoke.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags garlic, syrphid flies
July 15, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise. A snort from the deer who sleeps under the crabapple tree. A hummingbird zips past the wild garlic.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, garlic, ruby-throated hummingbird, sunrise

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On This Day

  • May 18, 2025
    In warbler season, even the wheezing of the wind seems open for interpretation: green-winged or oak-throated? The sky is achingly clear between the clouds.
  • May 18, 2024
    Rain and fog shut out all sounds from the valley; a gobbling turkey and a pair of pileated woodpeckers are the loudest things. A titmouse sheltering in the lilac shakes the rain from his wings.
  • May 18, 2023
    High-altitude murk gives the low-angled light a timeless feel. It’s barely above freezing, but the birds still sound ecstatic. Tennessee or Blackburnian warbler? That accelerating buzz…
  • May 18, 2022
    The last cool morning of the week, they say. A turkey gobbling up on the ridge, as usual. A hen or a hunter yelps back.
  • May 18, 2021
    Even on a morning this incomparable I can be squinting at my phone and nearly miss the sun on a hummingbird’s 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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