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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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harvestman

March 31, 2026July 8, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Every morning, more soapwort blossoms, and the raspberry canes are stretching into new territory. A harvestman stalks across my gray wasteland of a porch.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black raspberry, harvestman, soapwort
September 8, 2026September 24, 2010 by Dave Bonta

A harvestman stilting across the porch stops to poke each fallen walnut leaf. Up in the woods, the sudden squirrel rattle that means Hawk.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, harvestman
September 8, 2026July 13, 2010 by Dave Bonta

Tansy blooms beside the porch. Black ants and harvestmen wander the allegedly insecticidal leaves; only the yellow flowers remain untouched.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags ants, harvestman, tansy
September 8, 2026August 9, 2008 by Dave Bonta

50°F. A daddylonglegs descends a goldenrod stem, slow as the minute hand on a clock. A catbird bursts from the lilac, crackling with alarm.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags catbird, goldenrod, harvestman, lilac

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On This Day

  • November 6, 2025
    Clear and cold, with wind supplying all the voices in the dawn chorus. A crow rockets past, wings at an oblique angle to its direction of travel, cheering itself on.
  • November 6, 2024
    Cloudy and unseasonably warm at sunrise. My head throbs from watching election returns. A small buck walks by below the house sporting a single spike of antler—a unicorn.
  • November 6, 2023
    Sunrise glowing orange between the half-naked ridgetop oaks. The yard fills with small birds: sparrows, kinglets, the inevitable wren.
  • November 6, 2022
    Daybreak. A buck sniffing the ground for signs of estrus scratches his head with a back hoof. A mosquito sings into my ear.
  • November 6, 2021
    Cold and very still. Every leaf in the myrtle patch—Grandma’s legacy—is edged in white. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.

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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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