Category: Self-Improvement

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Watercolor Haiku: Passion Flower

Here we are : the last day of the whole school year. Students graduated a week ago, and teachers leave mid-day today for the summer. Those of us at Central Office watch them wave, disguising our bit of green envy as they head out on cruises and vacations to mountains, beaches, and swimming pools. I’m holding on tight for the summer ride, just trying to get through mid-June and then two weeks at the end of July.

For over a week, we’ve been working on planning a work retreat that seems ever-evolving and unfinished, and I don’t know how things will go. When I looked back at Spring Break and thought back to those early attempts at watercolor painting sitting at that picnic table, just focusing on one petal at a time., I realized that this is good advice for any day. One petal at a time. I thought of the hope of the passion flower. I’m claiming it today as teachers leave for summer and we are left to carry on with work. And each day is one day closer to retirement.

For today, here’s a flower that represents HOPE.

It’s what we all need.

Passionate Plea

I hear you stand for

hope in everlasting life

but how ’bout today?

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Watercolor Haiku: Bird of Paradise

When I first bought my watercolor book of step-by-step directions on a side-by-side guide, I thumbed through the pages and wondered why they had chosen such obscure flowers. There wasn’t a rose or a daisy anywhere, yet there was a cactus and sea holly. And this bird of paradise.

And then, as I started working through the book, I realized that each painting teaches a different technique. The cactus and sea holly teach tiny little lines that look like thistle needles. The cactus pot teaches shadows in gradient colors. This bird of paradise, while I don’t love it, teaches the effects of wet-on-wet painting and how colors blend when water is used to move the paint around in an area.

I think the teacher in me needed the instructional framework spelled out, starting with the learning target, including an objective, and success criteria in little boxes to check if I accomplished it all. This is one of those examples that shows that process is more important than product – because the blending of color here in a first attempt carries into other flowers that have blending involved.

I don’t like this painting at all. But I appreciate it, because it gave me practice to be able to blend color in a hydrangea that I do like. And this is how watercolor painting is teaching me that life is like that, too. We learn skills in small attempts that transfer into other areas. Take the Karate Kid, for example. He learned Wax On/Wax Off and Sand the Floor and thought he was being used as a free worker. All along, he was preparing for that fight at the end of the movie that helped him put that blond-headed bully in an agonizing face plant down on the mat.

Looking back at the new learning gives me the reassurance that old dogs CAN learn new tricks. And even better: they can teach themselves if they can read and follow directions.

Bird of Paradise

flying just above my reach

soaring into sky

in a simple vase ~

an understated glass jar

in an upstairs loft

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Watercolor Haiku: Mushrooms

It’s funny how you can follow watercolor painting step-by-step directions and mess up big, but you can fix problems with parts of a painting never meant to be there in the first place. Like a really dark green leaf that comes in from the right side of the page. Like life throwing curveballs.

And let’s talk about placement – – my red cap on the larger shroom is supposed to be tilted down, but it looks more like a UFO hovering over the stem. And yet I sit here laughing about it all. The irony here is that if you look at the tip behind the leaves, it’s a reminder not to be afraid of mistakes – – but to see them as happy accidents. Like a wrong turn that takes you to the best slice of pie you’ve ever had.

It’s okay. It’s all okay. …….I’m journeying and embracing process over product. No one is framing my work, and I’m celebrating anyway.

And I like my stems and under-shrooms, so something turned out okay.

It’s fine, everything’s fine.

I’ll fix the rest of this fungi in retirement if I feel like it. And instead of chuckling, I’ll be belly laughing!

Mushrooms

mushrooms of my youth

1970s icons

scrapbook sticker fun

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When We Can Read, We Can Do Things

I’ve been watercolor painting step-by-step from paint-on-page instructional books on weekends, writing haiku, and relaxing in the paint peace. A Slice of Life blogger shared her Emily Lex watercolor workbook in March, and it reminded me of the one I’d seen in a shop in Woodstock, Vermont but didn’t buy because of the lack of luggage space. And then I was drawn back to wanting to (try to) paint.

It’s not like I’m talented or anything. Not naturally, anyway. But I can read and follow directions. It’s what I told a friend who once said she was glad her mother never taught her to cook so she would never be expected to. “If you can read, you can cook,” I assured her. And so it is with painting. If I can read, I can (try to) paint.

Fellow blogger Glenda Funk discovered she loved watercolor through a recent painting class I also signed up for, but my work life prevented my attending the actual classes, and in the midst of testing season I didn’t find the time in the evenings to go back and watch the recordings. Her paintings are vibrant and beautiful – the kind you can frame and put on your wall. When I’m retired, I will take a sure ’nuff painting class either online like Glenda or in person like fellow blogger Margaret Simon, who is also finding joy in the process. So does Anita Ferreri. Fellow blogger Debbie Lynn has also shared her gorgeous sketches and art forms, and more and more I’m inspired by all that our writing community does to express creativity through various forms of art. I wish we had an Art Market blogging day so we could share blog posts on how we blend writing and other art. I’d love to see more.

One flower new to me is a protea, and while I’ve never seen a protea in person, they remind me of a tall, thin water lily like on the logo above. Apparently the painting is relaxing me more than I realize. I came home from work yesterday all stirred up over an issue, and after listening to me whine for a while, my husband said, “You just need to sit down and paint.”

And I was relieved that he didn’t say, “You just need to cook.” He is alive and well this morning because of it.

Protea Haiku

pink, red, yellow, white

nectar-rich cone-shaped flower

South African bloom!

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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: 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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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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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

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VerseLove Day 28: Instructions

Our host, Jessica, lives in Chicago, Illinois where she teaches English. She is currently a teacher-consultant with the Chicago Area Writing Project.

Jessica offers these words of inspiration: “This winter, I was fortunate to see the Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. ” She was inspired by the lyrics of Grapefruit, in which a poem takes the form of instructions. Today, she inspires us to write poems on how to do something. You can read her full prompt here.

Lately, I’ve returned to the interlibrary loan system I used when I was in college to get books I want to read in my rural county in middle Georgia. I log in to my account, search the shelves across all the state libraries, and place holds on the ones I want in hard copy with my Pines System Library card. One simple click brings them across the miles to me – for free – where I pick them up and return them right across the street when I’m finished. It’s a frugal way to read anytime, but especially with retirement and a more limited budget as the next chapter. Also, our library offers free state park and zoo passes and theater tickets. If I want to listen, I can log in to Libby and get audiobooks too. This is the way to live, laugh, and read.

Librarian scanning books while woman shows library card at checkout desk
A librarian helps a smiling patron check out books at the library counter.

How To Enter The Next Chapter

get a library

card ~ reserve your books online

check out locally