Tag: haiku

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Watercolor Weekend: Fennel

When spring days grow warm and the butterflies appear, I think of my mother and the way she always planted fennel for the Black Swallowtails to lay their eggs. Once a caterpillar breaks out of its chrysalis and greets the world, it is hungry and can munch down practically a whole wispy branch of a fennel stalk. I’ve seen it happen. While I won’t be framing this watercolor painting to hang in my kitchen as the Floral Fun page tip suggests, it does bring to mind the happiest memories of my mother and keeps her memory close.

To the Garden Fennel

those Black Swallowtails

know you’re caterpillar hosts

nursing their offspring

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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: 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…