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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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wasps

July 4, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and very humid. The big dial thermometer behind me on the wall is buzzing loudly. A minute later, a mud dauber wasp emerges.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags mud dauber, wasps
June 7, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Clear—or what passes for it these days—and cold. The black digger wasp I last saw at dusk hasn’t moved from her spot on the porch column.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags digger wasp, wasps

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On This Day

  • October 2, 2025
    Cold and still, with a wash of cirrus clearing off after sunrise. Sound is out of the east, so instead of the usual roar of interstate traffic, I hear the shrill beeping of quarry trucks reversing to be filled and the grumbling of stones.
  • October 2, 2024
    Another dark, rainy dawn. I can’t stop thinking of my last dream before waking, in which I had died and reincarnated as a deer. I had so many legs, and everything was delicious!
  • October 2, 2023
    Sitting by the front door to enjoy the moon, I’m startled by a rabbit running between my feet in her eagerness to graze. Five minutes later she runs back to evade a weasel loping down the road. Orion emerges from the trees.
  • October 2, 2022
    Light rain seasoning the breeze. A squirrel perched on a swaying limb chisels open a walnut—that haunted-house sound.
  • October 2, 2021
    Mares’ tails reddening in the east. The reedy songs of white-throated sparrows. A raven’s nasal croak.

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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