I’ve not quite made up my mind about my new blogging routine, but I am going to keep to the one a day (on average) plan until the end of the month. I’m thinking I may drop back to a couple of times a week after that. Half of me says that there is no need to change, as 250 words a day shouldn’t be a challenge. The other half of me says that practising longer pieces will be good for me and I should give it a go.

Whatever happens, I do know that I had a rejection yesterday. Rattle magazine runs a monthly ekphrastic poetry competition, amongst other things. It’s a good way of getting my submission numbers up, and giving myself a new challenge. So far, it’s also been a useful lesson in rejection, with me achieving a perfect record of three rejections in three attempts. I don’t mind these rejections, because they reject the poems because they aren’t good enough. Yes, I’m still banging on about editors who reject decent poems because they don’t match up to some wrong-headed vision of what a poem should be.

I will not go further along that line as it’s difficult to explain without becoming tedious. I’m thinking about this more and more because it’s coming up to the time when I will have to select a poem for a best of issue tanka, and I’m still not sure how to do it. I think I’ll just select the one I like the most and be honest about it. I’ll leave scholarly comment to other people.

Meanwhile, I just had two acceptances to balance up the rejection, and we had the woodpecker back on the feeders this morning. We have also got a small rabbit in the back garden. We aren’t sure how it got in, but are hoping it will be able to get out the same way as I wouldn’t want to see it trapped. It seems to have burrowed into the compost bin in search of vegetable scraps, but am not sure there is enough food in the garden to support even a small rabbit. The photo isn’t good, but it was done on a phone and enlarged without mercy.

It’s been a good time for wildlife – all the fledglings, the woodpeckers, a rabbit, a sparrow and the return of the goldfinches.