Author: kimhaynesjohnson

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Watercolor Haiku: Orchids

Somehow or other, orchids are on a whole elevated level in the world of flowers. I think that even my father, who called hydrangeas “hydrangulas” in his final days, knew this. He distinguished himself and his friends, socially, by the esteemed class of this flower. As he talked about his dating days and how he earned money for the movies and dances selling crawfish he and his cousin Porky had caught in the Okefenokee Swamp, he made it clear that they were not “orchid guys,” as if the high school boys in Waycross, Georgia had circles of their own like Greasers and Socs in The Outsiders. In July of 2025, the month following his death in June, I shared the stories he had told us as my brother and I sat at his bedside – – many of them recorded so that others, too, could hear him tell all about the good old days. All those stories and recordings that I shared are on the right hand side of my blog page in the July 2025 tab.

Remembering that Dad was not “an orchid guy” on the heels of a weekend on St. Simons as my brother and I are still cleaning out the house, I’m here to tell you that he was right about that. Orchids take a lot of care, and Dad spent a lifetime collecting things that gathered dust and went unrepaired. You can flippantly toss a carnation around and it’ll last for days in a kitchen windowsill, but one cross look at an orchid and it will lose its petals and wither. Dad was a carnation guy – – not an orchid guy. And nearly one year later, I understand more about why he was not an orchid guy than I did when he first told the story.

Orchid

I cannot grow you

and perhaps I can’t paint you

but oh, I shall try!

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Watercolor Haiku: Sea Holly

I leave my island home today where I grew up, headed back to my home in middle Georgia. I chose the sea holly watercolor I painted back in April to share today. I was blessed to grow up on an island that so many love to visit for vacation and bask in the sunshine and relaxed pace of its beaches and massive oaks. These are all part of my roots, and I’ll never forget the days I spent here. But my roots have extended, and it’s time to release this place, keeping the strength and love I came to know here. And so the Sea Holly captures the essence of this day.

Goodbye, St. Simons Island, Georgia ~ the house is cleaned, ready like a hermit crab’s shell to house another family that will fit inside this place that will protect it from storms and dangers. I pray blessings over its future, that just the right buyer will come along and take up residence here.

Leaving the Island

Sea Holly blossoms ~

drought-tolerant, sun-loving

like most strong women

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Watercolor Haiku: Thistle

Today and tomorrow, I’ll be working in my late parents’ house – replacing toilet seats and ceiling fans, scrubbing hard water stains out of toilet bowls, and hauling the last things off to the dump. I bristle at some of the memories in that house, when what I need to do is thistle at them. So I’m changing my mindset from bristling to thistling…..and I may even whistle while I thistle.

It’s all part of the grief process I’ve been in for the past year with the way Dad chose to live his remaining years, still holding tight to everything he ever owned, despite our repeated requests to help him divest himself of all that was in those seven storage rooms and crammed into his house. He never considered the mess he was leaving for his children – a newlywed son who has had more to do than to want to clean up a lifetime of someone else’s memories, and me – a daughter who lives five hours north and works full time. Ah, but I digress and bristle…..let me thistle instead.

The Symbolism of Thistle

bravery and strength~

I need to thistle myself

for the coming hours

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Watercolor Haiku: Hummingbird

Somewhere in a box tucked in a recessed corner of the things I saved that I have not yet dealt with, one of Mom’s hummingbird ornaments rests in a padded wad of tissue paper, its tag still attached to the hanging string. She always loved birds – especially hawks and hummingbirds – which are as different as she and Dad were, this odd combination of meek and majestic. And just as oddly, she was the majestic one. She was the hummingbird.

Today, we head south to get the remaining things out of the house so that it can go on the market. And while I’m there, I’ll be watching for hummingbirds and hawks. They tend to appear now and then at the least expected times.

Hummingbird

you : Mom’s favorite

she watched you hover, dart, sip

here, then gone – just like her…

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Watercolor Haiku: Sunflower

Today’s watercolor took me back to the early 1990s when my bedspread, curtains, and wall art in my bedroom were all splattered with splendid sunflowers – big ones, with a blue sky background that made me feel like I woke up in a Van Gogh painting every single morning. I can’t wait to have more time to paint; each of these paintings I’m sharing in May were created over Spring Break the first week of April, and even though I’m in a watercolor class now, I haven’t been able to attend in person because of…..well, the month of May…..as an educator. Days and nights both are slammed with commitment, and retirement keeps calling my name a little more loudly each time. Because I really have some petals, leaves, and stems I need to work on.

Sunflowers

you graced my bedroom

patterned paintings and curtains

a king-sized bright theme

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A Cento Poem

It’s hard to believe that after today, students in our school system have only 12 days left until summer. The time crunch of finishing out this year has us all scrambling to wrap up the loose ends of one school year and pick up the new ones for next year – – I feel pulled in two different directions, but as I told my husband years ago when he couldn’t figure out why I was so moody at the beginning and end of a school year, “Circle August and May on your calendar, and remember that those are the months I’ll be slightly frustrated about most everything.”

I have a few more Centos I was working on in March that I had left unfinished and have now completed, and this one today is from Sophie Diener’s collection Someone Somewhere Maybe. I wrote this one for three dear friends who are moving on to new chapters in their lives next year, and I couldn’t be happier for them after the year they’ve had. For C, A, and S. One of the most wonderful places on earth has changed, and they are ready for better days.

Burning Bridges

I think I need to remind myself

I hope that you are happy

I will explain my anger:

a bridge that’s been burned.

Taken from: Birthdays; Hope You’re Happy; When I Lay Down the Pen; Seasons

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Sally Donnelly’s Book Club and Watercolor Haiku Weekends: Potted Cactus

I’m already dreaming of a summer of reading and all the books on my TBR list – – and I will begin with a collection of poetry. Sally Donnelly, a long-time writing buddy from Two Writing Teachers whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting on more than one occasion in person at the National Council of Teachers of English Convention, is hosting a Summer Reading Club. You can check out her invitation to participate and her directions to her Padlet here, introducing her selections Dictionary for a Better World by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other, an anthology curated by Padraig O’Tuama. I have had the opportunity of deeply engaging in Dictionary for a Better World a few years ago, so on Wednesday of last week while I was in Atlanta on a personal day to see the musical Six, I treated myself to the guilty pleasure of leisurely browsing a bookstore, where I picked up a copy of 44 Poems on Being With Each Other.

Yesterday, Wildflower Watercolor Week started, and I’m taking a class online to learn more about watercolor techniques. After March bloggers at Slice of Life shared their love of Emily Lex watercolor books when Leigh Anne Eck asked what everyone would bring to a party where technology was not allowed, it brought back memories of strolling through Woodstock, Vermont and seeing one of those themed watercolor books after NCTE was held in Boston a couple of years ago. Slicers resurrected that memory with their love of watercolor books. I picked up an off-brand at Hobby Lobby and shared a couple of my paintings with Glenda Funk, who then found a watercolor class on Facebook and encouraged me to sign up. So I did, and I look forward to learning new techniques from a real person, not a step-by-step book. On weekends throughout March, (and today) as we travel here and there, I’ll be painting and sharing Haiku Watercolors – the semi-good, the bad, and the ugly.

Here’s one of my daughters’ favorites, along with a haiku that mentions one of my favorite poetry collections I’ve read lately: Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan.

Cactus Coddiwomple

I read about you ~

Instructions for Traveling

West ~ Take me with you!

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A May Cento: Lucille Clifton

After an unseasonably chilly weekend with some misty drizzle and some sunshine while we were out gallivanting in Indian Springs State Park in Flovilla, Georgia and having shrimp and gouda grits at Yahola Creek for the Kentucky Derby party, we are back to the weekday work routine of a mundane Monday. I can’t help considering the similarities of the Derby for a horse to the impending retirement of everyday people everywhere, looking forward to grazing in the green pasture without running the race in all the trained and prescribed ways of riders jockeying them into position, running the never-ending course to finish first in their own Golden Tempo.

I was thrilled to see history made Saturday with the first female trainer of a Kentucky Derby winner wearing the color of the day – the hope for the run for the roses of red – as she tearfully approached the ring and took her place in the annals of time, celebrating her moment as the hearts of all women everywhere cheered her from the stands and living rooms throughout this great country and all around the world. Ada Limon’s famous poem How to Triumph Like a Girl is not lost on a day like this, the poem itself inspired by the running of the horses when the poet lived in Kentucky.

Ears up, girls, ears up! – Ada Limon

And for today, here is another favorite female poet – Lucille Clifton – whose poetry I’ve used to create a cento like those I wrote in March, using a line from different poems to form an entirely new one.

Wild Country

live where you can

be the one that understands

it is home and you know it

but listen

it is wild country here

there will be no peace

listening for the bang of the end

Taken from poems in this order: eyes; defending my tongue; ways you are not like Oedipus; to my friend, Jerina; eve thinking; lucifer understanding at last; the beginning of the end of the world

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Watercolor Haiku: True Leaves

We’re off on a Haiku Watercolor Weekend in The Next Chapter, our Wayfarer way of wandering the world and seeing all the beauty of different places from the above the rims of our coffee cups on a cool, misty morning as we gather our schnoodles, Boo Radley and Ollie, into our laps and give them tiny bites of powdered donuts on a Sunday morning in Indian Springs State Park in Flovilla, Georgia. And yes, we, too, are a little misty-eyed even without the weather, because we are missing our Schnauzery-Schnoodle Fitz, who was too miserable to go on living and had to be granted the perpetual nap last Wednesday afternoon as I held him for the last time, hugging him close as he drew his last breath in this world. He was a camping dog straight to his very core and took in the world through his nose the way we take it in through our eyes, only he made no effort to hide his animalistic wild passion to dig into it all while we sometimes take it for granted and try to keep ourselves contained. But he is here in his way, in spirit, for there is a little vial of clipped hair that sits in its place in the Wayfarer that he slept in only once before taking an exit the rest of us haven’t taken yet. And while he’s reached his final destination, he remains forever imprinted on our hearts for the rest of our journey because we are forever changed having been his people.

May is a month of Haiku Watercolor Weekends, and I’m sharing it all – the learning, the bad, the ugly, the once-in-a-million surprise of something turning out like there might be a cell of an artist in my blood somewhere. I’m even sharing the ones where the paper got too wet; but hey – it’s a leaf, and they get waterlogged in the rain, right?? I think what I’m learning most is how to look really closely at every detail, and to be more like Fitz was: to want to dig into the world and take it all in without taking anything for granted. I’m also learning that though artists often make things look easy, things aren’t always easy. Take leaves, for example…..

True Leaves

Here’s a memo: you’re

not fall leaves any more than

I’m a fall human

so I painted you

as the true leaves that you are

when you’re going gray

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Watercolor Haiku: Monstera

Throughout March, I had blogging friends in the Slice of Life Challenge who shared their love of the Emily Lex watercolor books that take you step by step through watercolor painting techniques. I found some off-brands in Hobby Lobby and picked up a book on Spring Break during a camping trip. It was so relaxing and stress-relieving for me! I am planning to make Haiku Watercolor Weekends happen in May as a tribute to Matsuo Basho, whose most well-known haiku poem is on my blog logo this month. I like setting up a table at a campsite and enjoying the sounds of nature as I paint and write. My friend Glenda Funk of Idaho signed up for a Watercolor Week class on Facebook, and I may do the same since it is ten dollars for the week and they offer the recordings of the live sessions since I’ll be working during those times.

Today, I’ll be on my first outing in the new motorhome, The Next Chapter, at Indian Springs State Park. We traded in the InTech for something I could drive, and I picked it up last Saturday. The retirement dreams are becoming actual plans – but first, I am using the last three months before retirement traveling locally to learn how everything works with setup and driving. I didn’t want to have to tow anything, so I won’t have to hook it up to the hitch, and all I have to do is mash a button for the self-leveling feature. It drives a lot like a large SUV, and because it has a great backup camera, I can back into campsites with fewer challenges. I may even find some time this weekend for painting – – but meanwhile, here is one of the very first attempts I made in April. It’s a Monstera plant, and the holes remind me of monster eyes.

Monstera Eyes

I see right through you ~

or are you looking at me?

those eyes have questions