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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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mayapples

April 23, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Warm and a bit humid. As the sun climbs, the brightest shine shifts from mayapple leaves along the creek to the mountain laurel in the woods, shimmering as if unafflicted by any blight.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags mayapples, mountain laurel
May 8, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Clear and windy after a week of damp weather. Down by the stream, one or two mayapple flowers peek out from under their crowd of umbrellas.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags mayapples
May 1, 2015 by Dave Bonta

Buds have burst on the witch hazel, leaf-pairs clasped together as if in prayer. Dimly visible in the fog: a crowd of mayapple umbrellas.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, mayapples, witch hazel
April 16, 2010 by Dave Bonta

The mayapples next to the creek have opened their umbrellas. We do need rain. Already, the top branches of the crabapple have caught fire.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags crabapple, mayapples, stream

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On This Day

  • August 15, 2025
    Half a moon alone in the sky. A silent catbird flies into the half-dead lilac. Off through the forest, blinding fragments of the sun.
  • August 15, 2024
    Cool and still, with sunlight at half strength due to atmospheric haze—smoke from Canada’s burning forests. A wood pewee’s bluesy melisma.
  • August 15, 2023
    Leaves glistening with last night’s rain. A distant raven. The puttering of a hummingbird’s small motor.
  • August 15, 2022
    Drizzle thickening now and then into proper rain. The bracken in my yard glows in all the colors of decline and fall.
  • August 15, 2021
    Ten minutes before first light, the first distant, barking dog. Ten minutes before that, a barred owl’s cackle.

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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