Creative Nature

  Tea & Poetry #5 30 Days Wild: And right on cue, a poem by Emily Dickinson, (from: Read Me 2 - A Poem for Every Day of the Year) with red clover heads I picked earlier to make tea. Clouding Over Day 5: #30DaysWild2022 Enjoyed a Nature & Poetry zoom session today; participants were asked to call to mind 5 Nature related memories, which led to the genesis of a poem about my being about 4, paddling, when the tide suddenly turned and came in at a scarily fast pace, with no-one around to notice or help as it threatened to overtake me. I will work on it further, but took the opportunity to walk down to the sea after - with black rain clouds forming and breaking. I also discovered this: https://cloudappreciationsociety.org - with art, poetry & other stuff. Also happy to find this poem by Rumi: https://www.reddit.com/.../poem_the_black_cloud_by_rumi.../ & the others I hadn't known about before. Enjoying this organic daily exploration of Nature and all that it inspires.

 30 Days Wild: Wildlife Trust, 2021, 2022 Another year - another creative & wild challenge to do something Nature-related every day. It's what started this blog back in 2017. I decided I should do my efforts the honour of being recorded here, as well as being a good way of reviewing the past two occasions I joined in the project. So, these will be taken from my Facebook posts. Enjoy! This first item is from 2021: 1st Day of 30 Days Wild - a month of random acts of wildness; I wanted to do a hundred things at once! Walked to Wish Park and tried to make a collage sketch using whatever I could from a magazine I'd brought to tear up (+ glue stick, which I'm Never without). I was able to put my 1st sticker in the 'passport' - good fun & a great way to connect with Nature. These collage-sketches are a recent experiment/project to try & get the hang of using a sketchbook regularly, in 10-15 minute efforts. And this is this year, 2022's 1st Day: 1st day of #...

A Little Bird Told Me...   to listen!   Inspired by my friend's gift to her man of a book to help him identify garden birds, complete with audio samples of their songs, I decided to find out for myself what they sound like so I'll be able to identify them myself in future. Thank you, Wildlife Trust & Sandie, I've learned something new. Very basic; very A-B-C, but that's where it all begins...   The Poetry of Birdsong   I also came across this poem by R.S. Thomas: A Blackbird Singing, which also fits the bill.     The Audio Bit...   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB1lgjg9e4Y     wildlifetrusts.org/30DaysWild        

Time in - Time Out   Thank God for gardens - even mine! My back's still painful & twinge-y, but I spent a lot of time in the garden yesterday and today clearing, pruning, and re-arranging; then hauling chairs out of my dilapidated shed & painting them; then hanging up washing & reading a good book with equally good coffee. And inspired by my poetry finds yesterday, while clearing indoors, I've started a file of Nature-related poetry. I liked this one by C. K. Williams, who I wasn't familiar with - an American poet who won the Pulitzer prize in 1999 with his collection entitled 'Repair'. He seems to use nature to good effect, almost as a prop, a poetic device to explore emotions in more depth; the other example of his work in 'Poems of the Year' edited by Neil Astley, published by Bloodaxe, 2003, is 'The Doe' - excellent! But today I'm posting 'Doves' - it touches on the recognition of not knowing ...

Cultivating Poetry   A friend arrived unexpectedly in search of bike inner tubes, knowing I had several possible sources stashed in my front & back gardens. We went on an expedition. I had to do some serious pruning just to clear a path! in the process I discovered my drain was blocked, so set about clearing it & protecting against it happening again (too much soil & decomposing slugs - Nature gets everywhere). We found an inner tube he could take away with him, along with a bike carcass to take to the dump. meanwhile, I'd been bitten by the clearing bug & returned to the wilderness armed with secateurs.....very satisfying. I also discovered a bike we had completely missed it had been so overgrown! Ooops! I also did my back in - pulling on some reluctant roots, so am now unable to stand straight. But the clearing bug came with me. I came across a couple of printed sheets of poetry I'd put together for a art & craft workshop for...

Wild Around the Block   Years ago, when I worked at Pizzaland, Charring Cross Road, London, the company paid for our taxi fares home if we had to work late. I had great conversations with my taxi driver, who looked the spit of Abraham Lincoln; he told me that Scandinavians have a term for people who thrive in the city - they're called 'pavement flowers'. I liked that. I loved living in London; but also here, down by the sea. I decided I'd go for a city stroll & find me a bit of urban countryside on my doorstep.       Have to consult my bird books, aware I'm not sure of the names of some common birds, as in the one below...tsk! A sparrow? No sea gulls, but loved the urban blackbird & colours on the pigeon (not a great camera for close-ups). I'm not that good at formatting pictures when blogging, either, so it's all a learning-curve....     I like how nature works around whatever...