I shall leave complex issues, such as I wrote about yesterday, and rather write about some quick glimpses of life. I’m happy to see one of my haiku was chosen for inclusion amongst the many others at Haiku Dialogue this week — and also last week. This week’s topic was : a simple dwelling place. Last week’s topic was a simple daily task. If haiku interests you, you should check out these posts. It’s amazing how clever some folks are at putting these concepts into haiku verses.
My last week’s verse was: another pill rewinding the old clock
This week’s verse, a monoku: fixing up the old house laughs again
The latest issue of Heron’s Nest just came out. I stand in awe of poets who can come up with modern haiku that twists, or entwines, two ideas together so ingeniously. To give you an idea, I’m restating the concept from one verse. The original was much better but I dare not violate copyrights. 🙂 smorgasbord my multicultural dinner plate
Sometimes my mind has to work to make the leap and get the connection. 🙂 Here’s one of mine that stems from reading the news a few months back:
If all goes as planned, today I will be driven to Moose Jaw by my chauffeur-ish husband — in fact we expect to leave in fifteen minutes, so this will be a quick post. And a quick trip, as we expect to leave there after supper and get home this evening. This is a 2 1/2 hour trip one way and we pass through the beautiful Qu’Appelle Valley — one of Saskatchewan’s scenic beauties on the otherwise very flat prairie highway.
I’ve uploaded three boxes of jigsaw puzzles to take along and offload on a family member, who is saving some for me. Hopefully I won’t overload her — but like most puzzlers, she has friends and relatives who’ll gladly accept used ones. She and I do a puzzle exchange about once a year.
Our cat seems driven at this moment to go outside and check if there are enemies lurking. He’s yowling around my feet here, wondering why I’m ignoring him. However, leaving him outside to scrap with all comers might well be a disaster.
An interesting word I’ve come across recently in an old British novel, is the verb HAVER. According to Lexico, means to equivocate, vacillate (waver) and “Havers!” means “Nonsense, poppycock!” I don’t know if this expression is still in current use over there, but new to me. Are you familiar with this word?
Hello everyone! Yes, I’m still alive and well, though I haven’t been near the computer very much lately.
Spring – or summer? – is finally here. After our last snow the thermometer rose steadily and we’ve needed our air conditioner. Smoke from northern fires has made the air hazy for a week. The birds have returned; the trees around us are noisy from morn til night. No rain for weeks, just a bit last night, so I’ve been filling water basins on the lawn for the birds again. Chokecherries and lilacs are blooming and I should be doing something about my planters and flowerbeds.
My courage has been low these last two weeks. So much to do — it feels like I’ve five mountains that should be moved right shortly and have only a trowel to work with. Where to start? (Is this a sign of OCD?) Sewing projects waiting, flowerbeds to work, writing & editing needing done plus a heap of housework. Then I’d like to paint & draw again.
I can’t blame it on my health woes because the medication I’m taking has done wonders in bringing my blood counts back toward normal. Something to be very thankful for. I’d like to be upbeat but think of all the work that need doing and wish I had more energy to tackle it. Sometimes I do have good days; it’s not all bad.
At least I’m getting lots of fresh air these days, having become the peace-keeping force in our yard. A stray cat has wandered in – or someone has left it off. Anyone who thinks they can drop an unwanted cat off at some town or farm and it will cheerfully blend in with the locals needs a sharp lesson on cat behavior. Predators grab the weaker ones. The stronger ones have to fight for every bit of food and shelter they find.
Our Angus likes being outside, and he’s very territorial. He won’t tolerate this stray in our yard – and the stray won’t run from a fight. He isn’t going to let Angus boss him around. When the two meet, it’s claws and flying fur. So I’ve been keeping an eye on Angus when he’s outside and bringing him in the house should the other appear. Or I swoop in at the first sign of aggression, sometimes having to separate the two combatants. Not an easy task!
I have accomplished a few goals. Over the past two months I did get a new dress pattern worked out, a prototype for every day and then a Sunday dress made. I dug up part of my flowerbed yesterday. Saturday I did some decluttering.
I’m a hoarder – may as well confess. In the course of looking for our finch feeder I found a box containing old greeting cards and other paper keepsakes. Get-well cards from 1980 when I had my cancer surgery; cards from my 40th birthday party, from friends back in Ontario. My grands can deal with them someday. 🙂
Are you sentimental? Do you have old cards and diaries like these squirreled away? Or are you a minimalist?
This is dry land. Some crop land, a lot of pasture and hay with patches of brush. On prairie soil maps the soil in this area is classified as “dune sand” – not much worry about getting stuck in mud after a rain. Plus it’s rather saline, not suitable for a lot of trees and shrubs.
Buffalo berry, wild sagebrush, some wild rose bushes and chokecherries are the natives here. Silver Buffalo Berry (shepherdia argentea) is a very hardy, slow growing shrub found around sloughs, in coulees, and on light soils across the prairies. Buffalo berries, like chokecherries, are food for birds. The shrub is blessed with natural deterrent: deer won’t eat silver-leafed bushes and cattle seem to leave it alone, too. It can handle this alkali soil so it survives here. Ditto with sagebrush (artemisia tridentata)
As I said, we have a lot of pasture and cattle. There are a few dairies so we see some Holsteins, but mainly black Angus beef cattle. Some farmers have a mottled mix and I’ve seen the odd animal with long horns, indicating some Texas ancestry. Pasture grass is not lush here; beef cattle growers need to have a fair number of acres per animal and supplement with hay in winter & spring. We often see round hay bales being transported on flatbed trailers or sitting in neat rows in fields.
In spring and early summer we’ll see a few bulls in a pasture by themselves, or even one lone bull grazing or lazing. Contented or bored – one never knows. In early July they’ll be called upon to do their duty again, so calves will be born in April. Obviously calves have a much better chance of survival if the worst of winter is past. Calving is a hectic time for local ranchers, who must be near at hand, checking cattle frequently, to be sure no complications develop that will cost them a calf.
Light as it is, in the Dirty Thirties this soil really blew. Wannabe homesteaders picked a 160-acre quarter section at some govt office–usually the Land Titles Office in Winnipeg. Did the homesteader threw a dart at the huge map there? Most of them had no clue what they were getting and no idea how to farm this dry country.
However, they got the land and it was their business to farm it, until people realized – and the govt finally admitted – that some land may be open prairie, easy enough to plow, but NOT suitable for constant cultivation. And for sure not deep plowing. After the 1930s the govt bought back huge chunks of land in this area and designated it as community pasture. So it is to this day. From time to time we see mini cattle drives down our road, moving cows from the community pasture just east of us to pastures just west of us.
Inspired by today’s prompt, I hope my little ramble has given you a little picture of what we see in our area.
mission accomplished Old Angus sits in the shade bull dozer 🙂
Here’s a list of fifteen more delights in my little world:
– the rosy glow of dawn
– little dust devils whirling and twirling across an open field, or twisting through the longer grasses on a roadside
– watching storm clouds churning (One of the most fantastic sights ever was a huge super-cell in the sky west of us!)
– seeing much-needed steady rain soaking into a thirsty land
– sundogs and rainbows
– northern lights *
– watching a blizzard (from indoors, where I’m snug and warm )
– a twenty acre field covered with snow geese
– watching hundreds of sandhill cranes foraging in the field across the road
– seeing a flock of swans landing in the slough just NW of our acreage
– fields of canola in bloom, a gold carpet stretching out a mile or more
– the delightful scent of wild roses
– red-to-burgundy autumn leaves on our Amur maple
– the autumn brilliance of a hardwood forest
– poems about all these things
* An amazing sight: Several months ago I woke at 5 am – like, wide awake. (Must have been a nudge from God. He had something he wanted to show me. 🙂 ) I got up and decided to look out the window right beside my bed, which faces to the north. So I opened the curtains a bit – and saw some amazing northern lights rippling across the sky.
I’d watched for a few minutes when my husband woke up. “What are you seeing out there?”
“Northern lights. Really colourful ones, wavering across the sky.”
So he got up to watch. For awhile they continued streaming, then something incredible started to happen: all across the northern sky, wide puffs of light started shooting up from the earth into the heavens. Like half a dozen airport beacons in different spots, sweeping across the sky, yet each sending their beams straight upward. Here a puff would shoot up and disappear, then more to the west another puff shot up, then maybe in the middle of our view. Rapidly, steadily, the balls of light rose and disappeared into the stars. We watched for about ten minutes as these rising clouds of light continued bursting upwards.
Words can hardly describe the magnificence! I doubt I’ll ever see a phenomenon like that again. If it hadn’t been so early, I’d have sent a text around telling other ladies to get up and see this. Later, texting about it on our church sisters’ chat, I learned that only one other sister in our congregation was up to see it. The others were all disappointed to miss the sight.
I wrote in yesterday’s post that I was going to follow the example of Writing from the heart with Brian and list the many things I enjoy. I hesitate to use the word love. Years ago I heard about a young woman who was enthusing about loving some thing when an elderly lady encouraged her to “Love something that can love you back.” That thought has stuck with me.
So here are fifteen outdoor things that are a delight to my heart. If you are an avid fan of nature like me, many of these things will delight you, too. 🙂
Pixabay
– The first dandelions brightening the lawn, heralding spring. (But only the first!)
– Hearing the winnowing of a nighthawk when on an evening walk
– A wren in a nearby tree singing his merry song over and over
– The gentle coo coo of a mourning dove in the morning as it bobs along picking at seeds
“For, lo, the winter is past…the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle(dove) is heard in our land…” Eccl 2:11-12
– Seeing rhubarb nubs coming up and remembering Jane Kenyon’s “rhubarb leaf, like a mad red brain, thinks its way up through loam.”
– Seeing wrens moving into the birdhouses I’ve set up for them
such a wee bird sir wren – yet how fiercely you scold that cat
– Discovering a toad in my flowerbed. I actually like the little guys and I know they’re helpful.
embarrassed by light they wait for darkness good works in secret
– The setting sun tinting the clouds pin and mauve
– Colorful butterflies flitting around, lighting on blooms and folding their wings.
– The satiny softness of tulip petals
– Hummingbirds zipping around our feeders
– Humming bird moths nectaring among the flowers at night
— Seeing the birds taking baths in the water basins I’ve set out for them
– Vees of Canada geese winging their way northwards
– When the Youth group sings for the seniors at the Villa on summer evenings, with the windows open, hearing the robins singing along (Some may say this is pure coincidence, but when the youth – who sing acappella – blend their voices in a hymn, the nearby robins do seem to join in, full voice.)
Christine's Collection 