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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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wood frogs

March 25, 2016 by Dave Bonta

One wood frog still calls in the marshy corner of the field, late for the orgy. Under the porch railing, the first, tiny spiders of spring.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags spiders, wood frogs
March 16, 2016March 13, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Rain. In the marshy corner of the field, the duck-like calls of wood frogs, just up from their cryogenic sleep and already fully aroused.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags killdeer, rain, wood frogs
April 11, 2014 by Dave Bonta

The last few wood frogs still croaking down in the marsh give way to spring peepers, who soon fall silent in turn. Then the patter of rain.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rain, spring peeper, wood frogs
April 7, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A warm morning. When the sun goes in, the birds at last grow quiet, and I can hear wood frogs calling down in the boggy corner of the field.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags wood frogs 1 Comment
April 5, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Mid-morning: overcast, 36°F, but the wood frogs are making a ruckus in their eyedropper of a pond. Yellow buds swell on the French lilac.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags lilac, wood frogs

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On This Day

  • August 16, 2025
    In the wake of a quick hummingbird with her elegant wand, a bumblebee continues to work the jewelweed, clambering up into each orange throat.
  • August 16, 2024
    The sun in fragments through the trees behind the old dead maple, which has a distinctly joyous appearance now that it’s shed its top half.
  • August 16, 2023
    A mosquito rests on the arm of my Adirondack chair, watching the sunrise. A hummingbird surprised by a sudden movement buzzes toward me rather than away.
  • August 16, 2021
    Cloudy with 100% chance of migrating warblers: the yard is briefly possessed. I hear a noise, turn my head and meet a rabbit’s critical gaze.
  • August 16, 2016
    Two cabbage whites engage in a dogfight, or possibly a pas de deux. A leaf detaches itself from a lilac branch and turns into a hummingbird.

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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