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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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jewelweed

September 1, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Clear and cold. I hear a hummingbird below the porch, buzzing from one orange jewelweed goblet to the next. The sun must be up.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird, sunrise
August 14, 2023 by Dave Bonta

At ten minutes till sunrise, the first hummingbird buzzes in to the orange touch-me-nots. A wood thrush calls from the woods’ edge, but doesn’t sing.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird, wood thrush
September 3, 2022 by Dave Bonta

As above, so below: white sky, white snakeroot. A hummingbird buzzes in to bother the jewelweed below the porch.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags clouds, jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird, white snakeroot
August 3, 2022 by Dave Bonta

Cool and crystal clear. The buzz of battling hummingbirds below the porch where jewelweed has eluded the deer.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird
September 9, 2017 by Dave Bonta

I notice a new patch of touch-me-nots in the tall weeds, beaded with rain, their nectar-filled tails curled primly in wait for hummingbirds.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jewelweed
July 26, 2016 by Dave Bonta

A hummingbird buzzes below the porch, looking for the touch-me-nots that the deer have eaten. Fly on my shoe, is it everything you’d hoped?

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flies, jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird
July 10, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and cool. A buzzing below the porch: when I lean over the rail to look, a hummingbird rises from the jewelweed to meet my gaze.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird
June 21, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and cool. Below the porch, a single orange jewelweed flower and a traveling shiver in the grass where a vole is foraging.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jewelweed, voles 1 Comment
August 1, 2015 by Dave Bonta

Below the porch, I notice a single orange jewelweed overlooked by the deer. The hummingbird zips right past it on her way to the garden.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags jewelweed, ruby-throated hummingbird, white-tailed deer
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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.

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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