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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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rhododendron

March 4, 2020 by Dave Bonta

The waxy surfaces of laurel and rhododendron leaves glitter in the sun. A bluebird sits silently on a branch, waiting for insects to stir.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bluebird, mountain laurel, rhododendron
February 26, 2018 by Dave Bonta

Bright sun for the first time in days. The wild rhododendron up in the woods shines like a city of glass seen from an airplane window.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rhododendron
December 12, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Quiet and cold at mid-morning. The sole large rhododendron up in the woods keeps gleaming and fading as the sun moves in and out of clouds.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rhododendron
December 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Four does pick their way down the road, file into the woods, and surround a small rhododendron. “Stop eating that!” I yell. They bound off.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, rhododendron

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On This Day

  • December 23, 2024
    Deep cold, with hoarfrost silvering every twig and dead weed. The sun clears the ridge and spreads glitter among the icicles. A white-breasted nuthatch begins…
  • December 23, 2023
    Silhouetted against the dawn sky, a squirrel forages for birch seeds right where Venus was last seen, glimmering through thin clouds.
  • December 23, 2022
    Back after a 10-day absence, I watch a front move in: blowing curtains of white. It’s as if winter had been waiting for me. Juncos…
  • December 23, 2021
    Overcast and cold. A chickadee foraging at the woods’ edge sings his fee-bee song. A sudden scrabbling of squirrel claws on locust bark.
  • December 23, 2020
    Out before sunrise, I watch the sky on the weather app switch from black to blue in less than a heartbeat. Then the slow blood-reddening…

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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