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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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winter cress

May 7, 2017 by Dave Bonta

‪The first dame’s-rocket are coming out: dabs of purple among the banks of winter cress and garlic mustard. Basically, it’s rocket season.‬

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags dame's-rocket, garlic mustard, winter cress
May 7, 2016 by Dave Bonta

All the tulip trees I’ve planted over the years are shimmering towers of pale green. A rabbit’s ears twitch in a patch of wild mustard.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cottontail, tulip tree, winter cress 1 Comment
May 18, 2015 by Dave Bonta

It’s wild mustard season, the yard dotted with purple dame’s-rocket, white garlic mustard, and among the cattails a riot of yellow rocket.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cattails, dame's-rocket, garlic mustard, winter cress

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On This Day

  • November 6, 2025
    Clear and cold, with wind supplying all the voices in the dawn chorus. A crow rockets past, wings at an oblique angle to its direction of travel, cheering itself on.
  • November 6, 2024
    Cloudy and unseasonably warm at sunrise. My head throbs from watching election returns. A small buck walks by below the house sporting a single spike of antler—a unicorn.
  • November 6, 2023
    Sunrise glowing orange between the half-naked ridgetop oaks. The yard fills with small birds: sparrows, kinglets, the inevitable wren.
  • November 6, 2022
    Daybreak. A buck sniffing the ground for signs of estrus scratches his head with a back hoof. A mosquito sings into my ear.
  • November 6, 2021
    Cold and very still. Every leaf in the myrtle patch—Grandma’s legacy—is edged in white. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.

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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