Tag Archives: blossom

Composing, Cliches and Searching for Subjects

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I’m back at work and being creative. If you can call poetry “work” and if you can call my work “creative”. mainly I just feed off the work of other people and potter about in the middle of a shared cloud of words.

Spring is coming, flowers are coming out and trees are gently unfolding their blossom. It is a time of cliche for all writers of Japanese style poetry. That blossom will blow across grass and wet tarmac, will be picked up on shoes, will be trodden into oblivion and will fall into bad company as all the cliches come out to play. I can’t help it. I have a limited number of experiences to draw on, being a non-mobile urban poet.

Litter, discarded shoes and magpies make up a lot of my world. Delivery vans, memories and ragged gardens all play their part. I should probably go back to sitting in car parks and watching people pass by.

In an effort to return to previous times I have returned to composing on paper and copying to the computer. It’s a shame because I was just getting used to composing on the screen. However, needs must, and if the price of writing more is that I have to do more copy typing, that is the price I will pay. At the moment I don’t have much choice.

Last month was the first one in years where I submitted nothing and that clearly can’t go on. To write well, you have to start by writing something. Similarly, if you want ideas, you have to start writing, as it’s well established that the more ideas you use, the more you will have. I suppose that they will eventually dry up, but that’s a mawkish reflection for another day.

(Sorry, wrote this yesterday and went to bed before posting – more to follow today.)

Day 83

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Who would have thought that I would have managed a post roughly every 24 hours for 83 days. And who would have believed that Day 83 would seem so much worse than 24th March? It does though, doesn’t it?

We put an engraved American coin up for auction last week and someone wrote to ask if we would accept £40. It was tempting, but would have been unfair on people who had viewed it and were wanting to bid. It made £9.99 so we lost £30. However, we retained our integrity, and I feel better about that than I would about taking £40.

Blossom is out and I am still having trouble sleeping properly.

Looks like this is just becoming a random load of thoughts. I admit that my posts are seldom well-crafted pieces of tight writing with a unifying thread and a satisfactory conclusion (apart from it being satisfactory that it has ended), but this is disjointed even by my standards.

I just had a letter from an editor. I submitted seven pieces. Three were accepted. Neither of the two I thought were my “best” work made the grade.

Last night I read a haiku magazine and I reckon that fully 50% of them fail to be good haiku according to generally accepted guidelines. This shows the flexibility of guidelines, the capriciousness of editorial opinion, and how bad mine must be if I can’t even get one in to a magazine where half of them are flawed.

When I get cremated I want them to stencil “Could do better” on my coffin. Those words accompanied each school report I ever had, and continue to follow me to this day.

The pictures of blossom are from a few years ago, and probably in April, not March.

I just found that you can search your photos by subject, if you’ve titled the pictures – an area in which I am deficient. It’s taken me over 2,600 posts to find that out.

Blossom at Wilford

 

 

Day 80

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Has so much of the year gone already? This day Numbering title system is quite depressing. So to cheer things up, let’s watch Italy score a truly excellent try to the backing of Nessun Dorma.

I have, I admit, seen better, but they feature my kids and so (a) are not available on film and (b) I am probably biased.

This evening I watched one of those videos on health and am now convinced I am dying. This is a clear case of cyberchondria. and after a bar of chocolate I feel much better. For those of you who don’t waste time on links, it’s a clever pun on hypochondria, is a real condition and is caused by anxiety at the immense amount of information (and misinformation) about health on the internet.

The best antidote for worry is just to take a look around. Day by day there i more blossom out. White, pale pink, deeper pink and even red, though that is mainly camelias and they are, in general, a bit too showy for my taste. Set against almond, plum and cherry blossom, plus magnolia and even flowering blackcurrant, they are just to big and too red. Quince, which is also out, is red, but is subtler, with smaller flowers. The header picture is a quince.

That is all I have to offer today. I started off with big writing plans for the evening but ended up wasting time. I have sent one submission this month and have another ready to go, so I’m doing Ok, but am conscious that I still have another couple to do before the end of the month if I’m going to keep my numbers up. The numbers are important in themselves, but they are a way to measure whether I am writing enough (because practice makes perfect) ans whether editors think I am making the grade.

I went looking for photos of blossom in March but 2022, 2021 and 2020 have little to offer and in 2019 we had snow in March. These are some bird photographs from March 2018. Have we really done so little in the last four years?

Wren at Rufford Abbey

Nuthatch at Rufford Abbey

Robin - singing

Robin – singing

Bears and Butterflies

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I have just turned, or am about to become, 62. I can’t tell you exactly, because according to those adverts which are designed to worry us about cyber crime, information like that can help professional criminals steal my identity.

I’m not sure what sort of self-respecting professional fraudster wakes up in the morning with the desire to become a fat elderly man with creaky joints and a job as a shop assistant but you can’t be too careful these days. I would hate to get a letter from the bank telling me that I owed them money because someone has booked a holiday in the Maldives using a fraudulently obtained credit card in my name.

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A Bear in an Apple Tree

They always seem to want a holiday. Whenever Julia has trouble with her card (the details of which, as far as we can tell, were hijacked from a supposedly secure retail site) the culprits always try to book themselves two weeks abroad. And the bank always declines the transaction because it’s so far away from our normal spending pattern. She has the minor inconvenience of being without a card for a few days after they cancel it, but that’s not a problem compared to the alternative.

I’ve done a few new pictures of the bear after the last lot didn’t want to show on the relevant post, photographed some blossom and watched a blue butterfly flit around the garden. It didn’t stay still long enough for a photograph. I assume it was a Holly Blue because it flew round the holly tree, and because they always seem to be Holly Blues in gardens.

Anyway, can’t stay long today because I’ve just had a badly-spelt email from the widow of an African politician. It seems that when he left office he inadvertently retained a bank account containing $15,000,000. She’s a generous lady and would like me to have half of it in return for allowing her to put the money in my account for a while. I’m not quite clear why this is necessary but I never was much good at high finance.

Sounds almost too good to be true…

Alpine Strawberries – Sherwood
Apple Blossom – Sherwood

 

 

A Lazy Day

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We had a lie in this morning, though we did wake briefly at the normal time out of habit. After that I dropped Julia off at the laundrette and went shopping. This is all very depressing, as I’d imagined life would be more interesting after we got our Sundays back. This has not been the case.

It’s been cold for the last few days and we’ve had to have the fire on. I’m not sure if it was accurate, but one report said it had dropped to minus 4 C. It has certainly been frosty on a couple of mornings.

Here are some photos from the garden on Friday. One group shows the new (very) raised bed built frpm pallets. The others are blossom. Sorry it’s a bit repetitive, but I’m not feeling very original at the moment.

Raised bed at Mencap Garden
Raised bed at Mencap Garden
Raised bed at Mencap Garden
Blossom at Wilford
Blossom at Wilford
Blossom at Wilford

The final picture is a sign with a message. I suppose you could have guessed that without me telling you.

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Motivational message – Wilford

 

For tea we had corned beef hash, because it feels like a time for winter food. I included potato, carrots, sweet potato, onions and swede, then served stir-fried kale on the side.

Tomorrow we will be having chicken stew, with vegetable curry on Tuesday and Chicken tray bake with lemon and squash on Wednesday. With the exception of the tray bake they are just waiting to be reheated. At least we will be eating properly until the middle of the week.

And so it starts again…

A Few Photos

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Here are some photos from earlier in the week. The year is shaping up nicely, though I’m a little worried that the papers are predicting another Beast from the East with temperatures below freezing. My only comfort is that they’ve been reporting on it all winter and it hasn’t happened yet.

Spring in the Mencap Garden
Spring in the Mencap Garden
Spring in the Mencap Garden

The primulas are doing well. As is the blossom. If only the photography was up to scratch.

Spring in the Mencap Garden
Spring in the Mencap Garden
Spring in the Mencap Garden

Here we have some landscaping features – a newly donated chimney pot, the newly painted table and the newly painted log. There’s a lot of new stuff happening in the garden just at the moment, as you may have guessed from the unimaginative titles.

Chimney Pot at Wilford
Heart on a log
The newly painted table

Finally, I’ve thrown in a magpie. I like magpies, and they sit still long enough for me to get a shot.

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Magpie – so black it’s actually blue in places

A Few Favourite Photographs

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Cranesbill Geraniums
Apple Blossom
Tulips
Foerget-me-nots
Primulas/Auriculas

Now that I look back on my flower photos I wish I’d taken more. They are very comforting in the middle of winter.

I also wish I’d sorted them better as I’ve had to go through 1,300 images to find these.  They are cheering me up already, particularly the blossom. I’m looking forward to blossom time, which seems a very haiku time of year.

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I’ve always like grasshoppers as subjects – something that hides in the grass and is prone to jumping when disturbed is a challenge, and a good shot is always a pleasure.

Rolling Flatbreads
Potato & Chickpea Curry
Party time
Spice selection
Flatbreads ready to go

Finally, the Bread Group’s end of year curry. I miss the bread group, the smell of fresh bread and, of course, the curry.

I’m now feeling cheered, pleasantly nostalgic and inspired to write haiku, so it was worth sorting through a few photos.

Yellow Flags, Ducklings and Swifts

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Things are changing in Arnot Hill Park, the shrubbery has finally come to life, and the trees are in bloom. A pair of camera-shy Song Thrushes took cover in a horse chestnut as I approached and the trees were full of annoyingly elusive birds.

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There’s nothing quite like yellow flags for cheering the heart, particularly when you’ve just been confined to the house. I like irises, and I particularly like the yellow ones so it was good to see them in bloom this morning.

As you may be able to tell from the photos, the water has changed colour to an exotic blue-green, while we’ve been away too.

There are ducklings about too – though they are a bit of a handful from the parenting point of view. The first ones I saw seemed to be attached to a pair of Red Crested Pochards but they made a rush for freedom, the adults swam off and the ducklings carried on by themselves. I think they may actually have been Mallards, as they seemed to stay with the adult Mallards.

Round the other side of the pond I found more Red Crested Pochards, this time with four ducklings. I’m amazed by how fast they are for such small things, particularly once you try to get the camera on them.

Incidentally, I’m back on the old camera as it’s easier to slip into my pocket and…well, to be honest, I can’t remember where I put the other one last time I used it. That’s how bad my memory has been during the last few weeks.

Finally, alerted by high-pitched squeaks I found a family of Moorhens with four chicks. Two of the chicks swam across one of the islands and took refuge inside the wire bastions they use for extending the islands. It makes a nice secure cage for chicks, though the other two kept to open water. Typical kids, you have a nice safe cage for them and they make for open water.

There are also two Coots sitting on eggs, so there are more chicks to come.

Duckling in Arnold – Red Crested Pochard
Moorhen chick in cage – Arnot Hill Park
Mallard duckling – Arnot Hill Park
Moorhen wtih chicks

Unfortunately the Mandarin seems to have gone, so no more Odd Couple.

The film clip shows a pair of Mallards feasting on unappetising scum. No wonder they do so well if they are prepared to eat that.

And finally – Julia was out in the street this afternoon when she heard screaming calls, Looking up she saw eight Swifts. Looking down again after a few moments of Swift watching, she found a woman staring at her as if she was mad.

Who can tell?

If I Ruled the World

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According to the song, if I ruled the world every day would be the first day of spring.

Looking out of my window I’m not sure that would be a good thing. I’ve been looking forward to Spring, but I’d rather assumed it would feature flowers, blossom and warm weather. Currently, we are about four hours into Spring (which officially started at 10.28 am GMT) and the cold rain has only just stopped. I’m still waiting for the sun to break through, but I fear I may be waiting in vain.

The rest of the week looks equally miserable (and so do I).

For those of you reading in the Southern Hemisphere, congratulations on your Autumn Equinox, and apologies that the rest of it may make no sense. I suppose that somewhere down there you must have cold rain and cloudy skies, but I find it hard to imagine.

However, back at the opening sentence, if I ruled the world things would be different, even if if I couldn’t control the weather.

I won’t go into detail, because the sun has just emerged unexpectedly and I’m off out. Here are a few photos to put you in mind of Spring.

See you later. 🙂

Snowdrops – Arnot Hill Park
Alder catkins and cones
Spring at last!