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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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sunflower

September 21, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Under a thinning white sky, the thinning crown of a black cherry tree already less green than salmon. The sunflowers face every direction.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black cherry, clouds, sunflower
August 21, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Sun in the trees and a small spot of orange beside the porch: a Mexican sunflower blooming despite having twice been dinner for a groundhog.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags groundhog, sunflower, sunrise, woodchuck
July 21, 2011 by Dave Bonta

Thanks to the drought, the bracken patch in my yard is browning from the outside in. A wild sunflower beside the path bows toward the east.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bracken, drought, sunflower 1 Comment

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On This Day

  • February 19, 2025
    Cold, thinly overcast, and very quiet. The spot where the sun must be glows like a yellow door among the ridgetop trees.
  • February 19, 2024
    Cold and still at sunrise. A chipmunk pops up from under the house and scuttles over to the stone wall, where it stops to watch…
  • February 19, 2023
    It’s cold, gray and still, but the woodpeckers are living it up: pileateds hammering, red-bellieds whinnying, and a downy drumming his loudest.
  • February 19, 2022
    A flash mob of snowflakes rushing this way and that. Over the sound of water, the wind: all hiss, no hush.
  • February 19, 2021
    Four more inches of dry powder. The stream has shrunk to the thinnest black ribbon between white cliffs—a body that refuses to be buried.

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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