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The Morning Porch

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

  • September 3, 2025
    Snakeroot flower heads are beginning to open, white as the cows’ milk that they’re said to poison. A sunbeam reaching the porch shows me the shape of my breath.
  • September 3, 2024
    The coldest morning since May, with an inversion layer bringing sound from the east—the slightly quieter direction. The Carolina wren duets with beeping quarry trucks.
  • September 3, 2023
    Clear and not as cool. A catbird mews from the lilac. Rays of sun in the canopy are astir with gossamer wings.
  • September 3, 2022
    As above, so below: white sky, white snakeroot. A hummingbird buzzes in to bother the jewelweed below the porch.
  • September 3, 2021
    5:58 am. The crescent moon is increasingly alone in the sky as the dawn light metastasizes. A distant whippoorwill.

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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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