As the year pivots from winter to spring, crocus plants bloom and little frogs croak. We celebrate with a photo and a tanka. Yes, the tanka’s title and first line contain oxymorons. They are like the phrase “song without words” in the titles of several musical compositions.
Category: seasons
Early Spring Snow Shower
Unaware of what lies below them, snowflakes fall thru air that is barely above freezing. Aware of what lies ahead of me, I rejoice in a partial workaround for growing old.
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Friendly Friday Photo Challenge – Feelings of Spring
Ground Already Warm
Falling thru cold air,
oblivious snow flakes will
melt on the blacktop.
Falling thru cold air,
oblivious snow flakes will
melt on the blacktop.
[2019-03-22] Bummer. I want to photograph the inspiration for my haiku, but my old hands cannot go more than a few seconds w/o thick gloves in cold weather.
Hmmm. Tho unheated, my garage gets some warmth leaking from the furnace. I put on a pair of thin gloves that can be worn while doing some things that previously required bare hands. I open the garage door and look outside while standing just inside the garage. Maybe I can work enough of the camera’s buttons while wearing the thin gloves.
The lens zooms too quickly for fine control. I cannot move forward or backward to compensate for zooming too far out or in. Oh well, I can crop the image later to compensate for zooming too far out. Is there a serviceable view in some direction from where I can stand w/o getting too cold? Hmmm. I try five views and go with the last one.
While it does illustrate my haiku, my photo is admittedly not of standalone quality. I can live with that. Any partial workaround for growing old is a small triumph to savor.
Sky Sights and Sky Sounds
Sky Circles
Riding the spring wind,
hawks with still wings and shrill cries
claim territory.
© Steve Byland | 123RF Stock Photo
A lot happens in the sky.
Hawks stake claims.
Clouds sometimes imitate clams.
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Winter Pavane
From late autumn to early spring where I live, leafless trees dancing a pavane is a common winter sight.
Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #63
The Quest For A New Masterpiece Continues … winter
Seen from Inside
Swaying in the wind,
bare trees dance to Earth music
not heard thru the glass.
Swaying in the wind,
bare trees dance to Earth music
not heard thru the glass.
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Winter Respite
The image from a CDHK episode inspires a haiku about winter snow.
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Carpe Diem Extra 2018-11-16
Testing a New Linking Widget
Winter Respite
Mountains hold past snow;
clouds hold threats of future snow.
Nothing falling now.
Mountains hold past snow;
clouds hold threats of future snow.
Nothing falling now.
Daffodils …
… were her favorite flowers, so cheery and dependable in early spring.
I scattered her ashes among daffodils.
Carpe Diem #1402 Daffodils (one-bun)
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Solstice Salutation
Whether a person lives fully and righteously is vastly more important than which religion (if any) helps them do so. But I still wish people “Merry Xmas” in late December. Can anybody suggest something with more pizzazz than the generic salutations but w/o religious implications?
When I say Merry Xmas (pronounced like “MEH-ree KRIS-muhs”), it might be heard as an unwelcome hint that the hearer is (or should be) a Christian. I suppose I should say something like Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings instead, but the generic salutations for this time of year sound bland and vague to ears as old as mine. Can anybody suggest something with more pizzazz but w/o religious implications?
I decorate for the winter solstice (with multicultural Xmas lights and wreaths) and hope it is OK to wish U a
Merry Xmas!
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Oh Come, All Fibo-ku
An old Xmas lighting tradition defies a darkness worse than long nights. I honor it with my lights and with a fibo-ku (a haiku using the Fibonacci series rather than 5-7-5 for syllable counts).
My response to
Carpe Diem Weekend-Meditation #10
Fibo-ku winter time
could be called a “fibo-bun” because it is like a haibun but has syllable counts from the Fibonacci sequence in the haiku part.
Several cultures have responded to the long nights of winter with festivals or structures celebrating light at roughly the time of the solstice. While not quite old enough to have personal memories of Stone Age passage tombs aligned with the sunrise (on a few of the several days that amounted to the solstice with Stone Age time-keeping), I do remember multicolored Hanukkah candles and the cheerful chiaroscuro of multicolored Xmas lights draped over trees and large shrubs.
Nowadays I see mostly different kinds of Xmas lights. Some people set out ugly jumbles of inflated Santas and other symbols of the gifting frenzy; others outline their houses with harshly uniform white lights. But some still carry forward the old Xmas lighting tradition (with LED-s now). And the glorious vocal music of Hanukkah and Xmas still transcends the literal meanings of the verses (2 of which inspired my titles here).
Darkness worse than long nights and garish decorations hangs heavy in today’s air. Maybe this darkness will also recede. My lights are up.
Yet in the Darkness Shineth
Red,
green,
blue, and
yellow lights:
multicultural
winter solstice celebration
defies dark tribal hatred to sing of love and light.
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Thirty-six Hudson Valley Pix in 2017
These photos illustrate why fall is the best season of the year in the Hudson Valley. U can vote for your favorite(s) in Central Hudson’s annual Fall Foliage Photo Contest.
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I have gotten my electricity from Central Hudson for many years. This year, I also got some deeply discounted LED bulbs and a tiny chance to win a contest.
There are 36 finalists in Central Hudson’s Fall Foliage Photo Contest for 2017 (out of 180 entries). My entry is among the finalists, but winning is unlikely. That’s OK. A flyer for the contest was enclosed with my electric bill; it was a good day for a short local walk; I wanted to learn by doing with a new camera; I got lucky.
To see some good illustrations of why fall is the best season of the year in the Hudson Valley, U can visit the album page on Facebook with cropped thumbnails of the finalists. Click on a thumbnail to see the full image.
The contest is judged by counting Facebook [Like]-s. U can [Like] as many photos as U wish. Voting ends at noon on Tuesday, 2017-11-21. To have your vote(s) count, U must also visit Central Hudson’s main page on Facebook and click [Like] there. Central Hudson is indeed likable as an enterprise. They deliver the juice well, encourage conservation, and facilitate buying juice generated from renewable sources if the customer is willing and able to pay accordingly.
My own photo got some postprocessing on the computer to make the image more like the experience, but I refrained from goosing the image beyond the experience (and from [Like]-ing my own photo):
I liked many of the photos and decided to [Like] 2 photos that had unusual compositions and bright (but believable!) colors:
Old Gold
Ultimate reality is elusive (or maybe illusory). All photos in this post were taken by daylight on sunny late winter mornings in 2017, using the same dried silver dollar plant in the same corner of the same room. But they don’t look it.
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Tattered old gold still glows.
But is it really silver?
Or some nameless pearlish color?
Shifting light; flaky white balance; …
Ultimate reality is elusive (or maybe illusory).
All photos in my response to
Gold ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #111
were taken by daylight on sunny late winter mornings in 2017, using the same dried silver dollar plant in the same corner of the same room. The old camera’s unpredictable white balance sometimes lucked into interesting images. It also inspired a riff connecting an old Beatles song to a recycling incentive, but the old camera was replaced after showing more signs of senility.
Another response to the same challenge shows that silver dollar plants sometimes do look golden in natural light!
Waiting Impatiently for Autumn
My previous posts about waiting for autumn have been updated here in response to a CDHK episode. July predicts; August teases; September backslides and hesitates; October triumphs in the end.
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My previous posts about waiting for autumn were not CDHK responses. My response to
Carpe Diem #1227 waiting for autumn
(Aki tikashi, Aki wo matsu)is to update and reblog them. They fit the prompt better than anything else I can offer now.
Prophet for a Day (posted 2016-07-21)
Soon after the wild daylilies have finished blooming, another flower in my yard turns to prophecy. The pale blue blossoms are long gone, but a few of the leaves on a few of the plants have another calling now. For about a day, they prophesy the next season.
Prophet for a Day
Wild geranium
(just one leaf for just one day)
turns in high summer.
Fall Preview (posted 2015-09-01)
As happens in many years where I live, late August of 2015 was a sneak preview of fall, the year’s best season:
Days are still too warm, but more are dry and breezy while fewer are hot and humid. A few cool nights lead to chilly mornings, and I suddenly notice that my garden flag with a picture of phlox is out-of-season. The roadsides have goldenrod and purple loosestrife now.
Virginia creeper is turning, as are some red maples in wet areas. Nearly all the healthy trees are still green, but there is a hint of yellow in many of those greens. The process will slow to a crawl in September; I will spend much of that month grumbling when the weather backslides and thinking “C’mon! C’mon!” when I look at green leaves.
October
Bright sun and cool air;
azure skies and pumpkin pies.
Leaves fall in glory.
Seen in Spring
In response to the start of a new CDHK series, I go back to basics rather than push the envelope.
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Seen in Spring
Kelly green moss on
rocks near the clear quiet stream
with water striders
Stained Glass in Spring
Another haiku in fragment/phrase style honors the memory of Jane Reichold.
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Also of interest:
Carpe Diem Theme Week (6) 5 “Ask Jane …”
Carpe Diem Theme Week (6) 5 “Ask Jane …”
Stained Glass in Spring
Leaves and seeds glow as
sunlight nourishes new life.
Cathedral window.
Migrating Monarchs
After reblogging a post with a haiku about the autumn migration of monarch butterflies, I continue the story with another haiku and a tanka.
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A recent post by Christy Draper on Dancing Echoes honors the start of the epic autumn migration of monarch butterflies with a photo and a haiku, both beautiful. After effectively reblogging that post below, I continue the story with another haiku and a tanka.
When I worked in a building with a glass wall overlooking a broad lawn, I sometimes drew strength from the sight of migrating monarchs trudging thru the air with steady wing beats. They were doing what they had to do, and I returned to doing what I had to do.
Originally posted as Autumn Monarchs | Dancing Echoes:
Migrating Monarchs
Tumble from atop the trees
Black and orange leaves
• • •
Monarch butterflies
migrating to Mexico:
orange wings of will.
~ ~ ~ ~
Tiring as I trudge
toward an unseen distant goal,
I see the monarchs.
Mexico is far away,
but they will get there someday.
Winter Waiting
However bleak and dark it may be, winter is unlike the bleak dark periods of history. Winter’s onset and duration are roughly predictable. Like the beavers in my haiku, those who prepare can often endure.
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A Google image search led to the images in this post; clicking on them will jump to the source credits at the end. The haiku in this post is my response to
Carpe Diem Universal Jane #8 gathering clouds
with special thanks to one of Jane’s haiku about winter:
© Jane Reichold
gathering clouds
heavy and dark with holding
unfallen flakes
Quiet Endurance
Cold. Pond iced over.
Silent snow on tomb-like mound.
Beavers wait it out.
However bleak and dark it may be, winter is unlike the bleak dark periods of history. Winter’s onset and duration are roughly predictable. Like beavers, those who prepare can often endure. Too bad history is not like that.
Sources
I wrote the haiku while commenting on a wintry post by Poet Rummager that I liked. The post did not mention snow or beavers, but inspiration is quirky. Tho I liked my haiku enough to post it all by itself, I decided to wait until I had found images that would clarify it for readers unfamiliar with the way beavers wait out winter in their lodges. Those who would like to see more detail can find it on a very readable webpage that was created for course requirements at Hamilton College.
The photo of the outside of a lodge in winter is from a well-illustrated post by Harlan Schwartz on the Canadian Canoe Routes website. The photo was shared on PhotoBucket and downloaded from there.
The drawing of the inside of a lodge in winter is from the book Why the Adirondacks Look the Way They Do by Mike Storey (Nature Knows Best Books, 2006). The drawing was reproduced in a very positive online review by Paul Grondahl and downloaded from there.
2016 in the Hudson Valley
October bends w/o breaking.
2016 in the Hudson Valley
Wind and rain impaired
October’s color pageant.
Still the year’s best month.
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Mellow Curmudgeon 
