A Raft of Haiku

This week's challenge from One Deep Breath was "garden." Well, that struck a chord, or two actually! As haiku are addictive, I'm going to indulge in a few today. (Thanks for your patience.)

The Garden: first thought was the wonderful garden-in-progress we visited in Maine, the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Worth a visit, formally opens next year. This summer it's lovely in spots, a little raw in others. But I admired the lichens, we saw a leopard frog along a manicured path, and the idea of wild and tame together caught my fancy.

Brand new Maine gardens
Lichens 'mid tame flowers
Making room for wild.

Or, a variant in Fib form--

New
Maine
gardens
Frog hides here
amid tame flowers.
The wild waits beyond our dim sight.

I love the shape of Fibs when they're centered!

Home Again Fib and Haiku: The Husband, perhaps overwhelmed by the awesome responsibility of keeping everything alive in my absence, did an impressive job with plants I'd almost killed (with neglect) before I left. This photo from this morning documents some of his success.

Herb
plants
look great,
Thanks to one
who waited behind--
I should go away more often.

Welcome morning chores
after weeks of traveling
say I’m home again!

The "morning chores" haiku reflects all the livestock--wild and tame--he had to care for while I was gone. From filling hummingbird feeders (five) to feeding wild birds, cats, dogs, parakeets, and chickens... well, let's just say I think he's glad I'm finally home to help out a bit.

More Overdue Haiku

I've gotten so far behind with Haiku Monday, I hardly know where to start! This week's assignment is to look at something from two different perspectives. So here's my entry, in the nick of time...

Driving west, home from my "magnificient trip," as one friend calls it, I enjoyed driving through a magnificient storm in the vicinity of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Many cars pulled over to wait it out, as visibility was nil, but some of us persisted (slowly) in continuing westward. No opportunity for photos, sadly-- I would have drowned!

To the Farmer:

rain falls on croplands
bringing life-giving water,
beans and corn grow tall.

To the Traveler:

sheets of rain buffet
as we try to move forward:
some people just park.

Meanwhile, Back at the Shire

The Husband sends this photo from home, just a reminder of where I used to be... and will be again in a few more weeks!

More "Nature of the East"

I'm finally beginning to go back and get up those missing photos from the trip. Our visit to Watkins Glen NY is now posted at The East is Different, back in June where it fits. The rest will have to go in the wrong places I guess, but will get something up soon.

Journey... Home?

Today's haiku assignment from One Deep Breath is about the Journey. Perfect-- it catches me in the middle of perhaps the longest (literal) journey of my life-- well over 2800 miles and counting.

Today at the beach, I was thinking about the vertical displacement more than the horizontal distance and feeling just a little homesick ... so here's my haiku for this week:

six thousand feet down

our feet find a new ocean

unhomed... Atlantic.

Baffled by Gulls...

I should have paid better attention in the "Birds of Connecticut" exhibit at the Peabody Museum yesterday, because I'm stymied by the variety of gulls we saw today at the beach. I'm going to put up a few, in hopes the Husband (at home with the bird book) will help!

This brown guy was one of the big ones... not sure whether he/she was different from the other kind of speckled ones, or not. Some seemed to have whiter heads, but it could have been a gender distinction, I suppose. They all were certainly fun to watch. The little ones in the top photo, aka "regular" gulls, were the most abundant. There's also a little diver, sharp-beaked plunge into the water. Tern? (per the Museum display?) Too quick to capture by camera, but delightful to watch.



This was the biggest gull we saw. Thought I saw another big one, with black feet, fly by... but this one's feet are yellow... (Bonaparte's pops into mind, but it'd be a wonder if that was right!)

The bigger they are, it seems, the more time it takes to settle their wings when they land. Pigeons come down, and boom, wings are stowed. When these guys land, they have to shuffle their wings (left over right, right over left) a few times before they're comfortable.

We were surprised to see pigeons and sparrows taking advantage, with the gulls, of the pickings along the shoreline. Have a few more shorebirds to post tomorrow!

Guess it's back to the Peabody for me...

Overdue Fibs...

Sorry I've been so scarce here! Lots to tell and show in photos, this trip, but at the moment I'm overdue for an assignment from One Deep Breath. I've been waiting for the photos to come together with the internet connection, but here goes without the visual aids.

The assignment this week is to explore a new haiku formula, called the fib, following the Fibonacci series. A six-line poem with syllable counts of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 in the lines. Follow the link above to see more fibs and great photos from the haiku team.

I'm at New Haven (CT) now, and have been through a lot of rain to get here. (Still trying to send some of it home.) Yale is beautiful, but the first sunny day was Friday. So here's the fib:

Sun
peeks
out through
constant clouds
drying up puddles:
a day to furl the umbrella.

More eastern nature notes soon, I promise...