Easter Morning

Signs of Spring - Glory Be

There is a good reason why I have Witch Hazel planted in my garden where I can see it from the house.  Witch Hazel, bless it's wild and wonderful little heart, blooms here in New York, in late February and early March,  just about the time I become desperate for a bit of color and some sign that spring is, indeed, on the way.  

Another late winter clue comes from the birds.  They begin chasing one another around the yard in a decidedly amorous way.   Their winter silence is broken and  an occasional song can be heard.  

Inevitably, one damp and dreary winter morning, I will look out the window and notice that the sweet American Goldfinches, who turn a dull gray in winter are beginning to show traces of their coming yellow glory.  Everyday they are a bit brighter!  

Of course, in another week or two, there will be daffodils and other fancy stuff starting to bloom.

 But right now, in spite of cold and wind and lingering piles of snow, thanks to the Witch Hazel and the Goldfinches, I can believe in spring!

Fun with Photography 'Apps'

 Don't get me wrong, I love my camera and the photos it takes.

 But recently, I discovered that I can change the look of my  photos

using a myriad of 'apps' on phone , tablet or computer.

 I was, of course,  aware of photoshop and that it could do lots more but, at first,  I was too timid to experiment with it.

 What I didn't realize was that there are scores of 'art' apps and photo editing apps that will alter photos to look

like watercolors 

or oil paintings.

and literally hundreds of other styles too.

I have been creating haiga using my photos for several years but recently began to experiment with altered photo images, such as these.

It is very enjoyable for me to put the photo through several 'apps' to get different effects.

Once I find the most pleasing image,  I use another program to add the poem to the image.

 These photos were taken last fall during the leaf-peeping season and depending on the mood I want to create



















                  they can be very vibrant or muted.

I am not an artist but I do take some pretty good photos  and it has given me great pleasure to learn how to turn the pictures into 'works of art.'

Here is a completed haiga which was

published in the Winter 2014 edition of  Akitsu Quarterly


Take-Away - it is never too late to learn new tricks.

Akitsu Quarterly- Sand Crab Moon Haiga

Akitsu Quarterly

Winter 2013

World Haiku Association (122nd Haiga Contest)

World Haiku Association

122nd Haiga Contest

Busy, Busy, Busy!

My life is so full these days, I barely have time to write about it.   A few family obligations have stepped in the way of my writing time to some extent and this blog has been neglected while I kept a few other balls in the air, so to speak.

The truth is, I have been doing some writing, but it has been mostly poetry.  Much of it is on my poetry blog here : wabi sabi poems and images and lately, on Facebook too.  I was delighted to have several of my short poems published over the past few months including these two haiga.

These appear in the current issue of Prune Juice, a journal of senryu and kyoka .

My garden is blooming  and I am so blessed to have a wonderful peaceful backyard where I can work up a sweat pulling weeds and meditating on the beauty all around me.  I am one of those people who communes with the trees and the birds and even the bees.  In the garden, I feel close to the Creator.  

 I have a wrap-around view from my sunroom of the entire garden so even when the mosquitoes are biting, I can enjoy it.

 In the sunny area we've planted an array of flower magnets with lots of nectar and seeds to  attract the hummingbirds, gold finches, butterflies and bees too.

Above you can see the blue salvia - sure to bring in the hummingbirds ....

as will the monarda.........

also called bee balm!

Day lilies add so much joy and color to one area and each variety feels like an old friend.

This hydrangea loves its shady spot and, with the ferns and astilbe, it brightens up the mostly green fern garden.

I have begun harvesting herbs.  Today the kitchen smelled of lemon verbena.  I dry this wonderful herb to flavor my teas.  

Chamomile has seeded itself willy-nilly throughout the garden - I welcome these cuties especially since they make a wonderful sleep tea AND I add them to my hand cream and ointment recipe.  Chamomile is a lovely healing herb found in many natural skin care products on the market.  

The herb garden, moved to its new sunny location, is thriving.  The  African Basil plant pictured above (purple flowers) wintered over very successfully in my sunroom and took off as soon as I planted it outdoors in the spring.  

The summer weather has been good to us so far - not too much humidity.  The plants look so healthy this year- not as stressed as usual.   The humans are loving it too!  

My plans for the rest of July include:

* Keeping up with the weeds and the herb harvest.

* Early morning walks with the Admiral, who is recovering from surgery.

* Making photos and poems as a way of writing the joy I feel in the natural world around me. 

* Reading list : Moloka'i by Alan Brennert and Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver.

*  Daily meditation (and prayer) a way to spend  time with God and offer thanksgiving for all of the wonders of summer.

Take Away - It's summer!  Don't forget to stop to smell the lemon verbena!

Blessed Be These Hands

Blessed Be These Hands, Blessed Be These Voices

 Happy Nurses Week! This is the third year I have posted this. 

 

Blessed Be These Hands....

 Nurses' Week begins on May 6th and ends with  Florence Nightingale's birthday on May 12th.  It is a time to honor nurses and , for that matter, all caregivers who fulfill the role of nurse.

 I have been blessed to know many, many wonderful nurses in my lifetime.  Some taught me to use my hands, my heart and my head to minister to the sick.  Some worked along side me, encouraging, supporting, nurturing me through my career. Some became my closest friends, forming a special bond forged in the fire of our challenging profession.   Some cared for family members and brought healing to them and when healing was no longer possible, they comforted my loved ones.   Someday, I have no doubt,  nurses will care for me with kindness and compassion when I am in need of  their special healing touch.

   John O'Donoghue, an Irish poet, suggested in his book, To Bless the Space Between Us, that we don't need a minister or a priest to invoke a blessing.  We can and should bless one another. In honor of all the nurses who minister daily to the old, the young, the terminally ill and all  recovering bodies and souls, I offer this blessing.  It is part of the American Holistic Nurses Association's yearly celebration, to be held this year on May 12 at 12 noon and called  'The Nightingale Moment.'

                                               Nurses’ Hands

Blessed be these hands that have touched life.

Blessed be these hands that have felt pain.

Blessed be these hands that have embraced with compassion.

Blessed be these hands that have been clinched with anger or withdrawn in fear. 

Blessed be these hands that have drawn blood and administered medicine. 

Blessed be these hands that have cleaned beds and disposed of wastes.

Blessed be these hands that have anointed the sick and offered blessings. 

Blessed be these hands that grow stiff with age.

Blessed be these hands that have comforted the dying and held the dead. 

Blessed be these hands, we hold the future in these hands.

Blessed be our hands for they are the work of Your hands, O Holy One. 

The Nightingale Moment, May 12 Blessing of the Hands 

On May 12, 2000 at 12 noon after a moment of silence AHNA members Mary Gorka, RN, CHTP, Charlottesville, Virginia networker and Cindy Westley, RN, MSN, HNC, University of Virginia Medical Center, Community Services Coordinator, along with Joan Murray, Chaplain at UVA, and a former nurse at the Medical Center of the University of Virginia gave a local blessing of hands to nurses. That year, other Chaplains joined in to lead a wonderful effort in support of nursing. This tradition has been continued each year as way to celebrate the Nightingale Moment and honor the spirit of holistic nursing. Copies of the blessing were given to those who attended the ceremony to take back to their units to extend the blessings. The blessing is a responsive reading, leader says one line, the group the next. 

This Blessing of the Hands is from In Praise of Hands, Diann Neu, Waterwheel, Winter 1989. Adapted by Corlette Pierson, Pastoral Care Resident at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, Chicago, IL. This Blessing of the Hands may be copied and used for Nightingale Moment activities, but is not intended to be sold. 

Thought For Today :  I am thankful for all the wonderful nurses with whom I have shared my life's journey and I pray for and remember them in a special way this week.

Crow Moon Haiga

Northern Native American tribes referred to the full moon of March as the Crow Moon.  The crows were heard again after the long silence of winter and this always heralded spring.

Look What My Camera Saw!

In the Preserve©2014 BK

Early Winter Morning

Skimmia with A Light Dusting of Night Frost 2014

Can it be?  Winter is starting to grow on me!  This morning I saw this lovely soft veil of frost covering everything in the garden.  I grabbed the camera and rushed out to capture it before the sun got high enough to melt it away.

In the late autumn of my life, can it possibly be, that I am falling in love with winter?

****

Singing the (Winter) Blues

Heckscher State Park After a Snow Storm

They call it a cold snap - when the north wind rides into town with frigid temperatures on its back.  It feels like a slap across the face! 

 We are spoiled where I live since 'winter' usually means temperatures in the 30's. Tomorrow we will be tasting the cold air that many people endure for months in winter!  We are expecting the high temperature to be 11 degrees with lots of wind to make it feel colder.  

I can't do much about it except pull out the warmest coat I own(Thank you, Land's End,) find gloves and a wool hat and bundle up if I dare venture out at all!

Oh and because I'm a poet, I will try hard  to pay attention to the wind's song!

Stay warm!

Embracing 2014

 While the change from one year to the next seems like a good time to take inventory  and try to tweak one's life, the practice of 'making resolutions' bores me, seeming to me like an exercise in futility......the new 'rules' simply  daring me to break them!

I have another, more fruitful practice at this time of year. For the past four years, I have  chosen a word to carry with me through the coming year.  The practice of choosing a word, or rather having a word choose you, dates back many centuries to a time when holy men and women fled into the desert as a way of finding the space and silence they needed to hear God's voice speaking to them from the depths of their own hearts.

Shortly after Christmas, I begin a 12 day meditative practice, offered on line at Abbey of the Arts to assist me in finding a word that will challenge me, stretch me and encourage me to grow during the year.

This year, the word that chose me is 'EMBRACE.'  As soon as it came into my conscious mind, I knew it was my word!

2013 was a challenging year for me.

I had surgery which weakened my body significantly. I have had to accept a slower, weaker body, at least for awhile.

I am watching my mother's painfully slow decline into dementia. Day after day, she is forced to let go of one more bit of the past.

Relationships which I thought would last forever have changed in ways that I have no control over and the grief of letting go colored much of the year.

I found myself dwelling on the idea that to age gracefully, I needed to learn to 'let go.'   Though it sounded good on paper, it was a bit depressing.

As I searched for my word, the idea of embracing all that I have in my life....the many gifts that shower me every moment of the day and night kept returning. It occurred to me that spending a year with the word 'EMBRACE' would lead me to savor these gifts more.  I want to mull over the idea of embracing what IS.

I hope ......

...... to 'EMBRACE' who I am at this moment in time....my body, my mind and my spirit.

..... to 'EMBRACE' the people around me......enjoying every moment with my loved ones, my friends and  everyone I meet especially my beautiful grandchildren.

...... to 'EMBRACE' the gift of poetry and the gift of photography... two of my passions in recent years.

...... to "EMBRACE' the Divine One, the One Who Names The Stars and seek a more intimate relationship with the Creator of this amazing universe.  The older I get the more I realize that  this same Creator of the universe, is the One whose wisdom is whispered  in my heart in the silence of early morning.

...... to 'EMBRACE' the mystery of what the future will hold for me this year, wondering what  unknown challenges I will be called to embrace as the year unfolds.

****

Ode to Orange

Oh, there is nothing quite like orange, 

shot through with sunlight,

 bursting with the flavor of autumn

 against a dark blue sky,

opening the heart to a wild and wondrous dance.

Oh, there is nothing quite like the orange leaves,
bright flags the color of pumpkins and popsicles,

begging us to wander the woods to stare,
hoping our eyes remember
 the glory of orange
once winter gray arrives.

Oh there is nothing quite like burgundy,
or gold or rust or yellow fringed with chocolate brown,

to set off the orange 

and make the heart sing.

So grab a bit of orange,

keep it in the pocket of your heart,

ready to unwrap

on a dark day in winter,

when it is cold and gray and drear,

let it set you on fire,

so you can hear the rhythm

of orange

and dance again,

 a warm and wild autumn dance! 

©2013 BK

****

My Autumn

I've been out and about taking photos and walking a bit.  There isn't a more beautiful time of year on Long Island than autumn.  The weather has been perfect the past two weeks and the colors are in high gear. 

    I have hundreds of photos and  I'm still experimenting with different photo programs.  Here I attempted to blur a photo to achieve an impressionist painting effect.  If you click on the photo, you can get a closer look at the effect.

   My poems keep flowing out of the photography and the walks.  I am working toward poems and images that compliment each other indirectly. Ideally, the relationship between the image and the poem is a subtle one. 

    Below is the actual photo, right out of the camera with no enhancements or changes.  The colors are so vivid.  It was a stunningly beautiful afternoon.

  My recovery from surgery is now complete and I can finally begin a real exercise program.  It is a bit discouraging to have lost so much ground in such a short time but - I begin again.  I will be posting- hopefully - about my progress in the future.

  My plan is a simple one.  I have to regain strength which I lost over the past several months.  My legs are weak and I can feel the weakness every time I walk up stairs or stand up.  I have a weight -lifting regimen I will be doing three times a week.  On the other days I will walk.  I am already able to walk a leisurely 2 miles so next I will concentrate on speeding up and then gradually increasing my mileage. Can't ask for better weather for walking!

Thought for today - Seize the Day! Or Carpe Diem as they used to say in the really olden days!

Octoberfest!

  Did I ever mention that October is the best month of the year? 

  Where I live, October is usually day after day of perfect weather with birds of every description and color coming and going. There is nothing to complain about where October is concerned! (Well, maybe one thing, but I'll get to that later.)

With  the bluest  of blue skies and  a slow dance of color marching across the woods, October is the most photogenic month!

I am so inspired at this time of year... to walk in the woods or at the beach....to take a gazillion photos...... and to write poetry.

October you could be a heartbreaker but I won't let you do that to me!  Where the coming cold weather is concerned, I have adopted Scarlett O'Hara's philosophy......'I'll think about it tomorrow!'  Nothing can spoil this for me. 

(The first haiga is for my mother, who is forgetting everything.)

Embracing and Letting Go

This has been a long summer for me, a summer of  letting go of what  no longer  is and embracing what, very much is!  I have been recovering from abdominal surgery....had to let go of a large chunk of my insides which was putting me constantly under the weather. Thankfully, I don't have any diagnosis which would necessitate further treatment or worry!

 I learned, first hand, from the patient's point of view, about what it means to be kind to yourself and allow the healing to take place, slowly, in its own time.  I learned to let others care for me and I learned to trust in God that I was right where I should be. 

And I also learned that walking really IS the best exercise no matter what your pace or distance.  It brings strength and lifts the spirits. I am still not back to my daily four miles but I am slowly getting there.  My legs have lost a lot of strength and regaining it, at my age, IS HARD WORK!

I've had lots of time to think, to meditate, pray and write.  My book of poetry is coming along and most of my poems still hide out on my other blog (so far, my secret blog.)

A Walk in the Woods - Altered Photo and Text ©2013 BK

 I am experimenting with a new art form, altering my photos with a program Daughter Artist shared with me, called PicMonkey.  I have never fancied myself an artist, but I am having fun creating or rather recreating my photos.  The camera goes everywhere with me. (One advantage of a slower pace - I notice more of the Creation.)

At the same time this summer brought me the singular joy of grand-parenthood- a second grandson.  This is where all the embracing comes in.  Michael arrived three weeks early (on July 11) surprising his parents and everyone else too! I am, of course, in love again. After the stress of the NICU for eight days, his Mom and Dad brought him home. He was a tiny one but his mother put her mind to nursing him and he quickly caught up and now looks like the healthy two month old he is! 

Every morning, I thank God for him, for his wonderful parents,  and for all of my blessings.  



Thought for Today : My cup runneth over!