Jean's articles with the keyword: haiku

Plants on the top of a wall. A photo by one of my contacts Greg Douglas. Mostly I think of plants as rooted in the soil and forget they don't stay still. But the London's Pride I planted years ago moved through the fence to Jen and looks much better there than it did with me. Euphorbia crossed the garden path to a new location. Day lilies sneaked in from Debbie's. And a mysterious iris which appeared from nowhere in Jen's garden has now turned up in mine. All on the move. Keeping their eyes open for a better place to live. Somewhere to flourish and grow. Somewhere the next generation will do well. Will build a community. And it mostly works. The established residents move over a bit. Bare patches of ground get occupied. Sometimes there are unusual combinations I would never have thought of. Beautiful surprises. There are the odd thugs on both sides of course. Plants that look great but try to take over. Plants that don't look so great. Sticky Willie that was invited in by my old cat. Jen and I pull it up and laugh because it reminds us of the Ginger Peril. It's part of our past. No getting rid of it now and we don't care. The garden is better off for a bit of informality, flexibility, freedom. The surprises of plants on the move.

Yesterday I walked up to the limekiln and back across the moor. For a while I thought I would never do this walk again. Knees ! Well, one knee. The osteoarthritis was sudden and painful. I could just about get round the supermarket if I had a trolley to lean on. No more long rambles round Falkland. No more days out on the hills. Not a lot of point in holidays either or visits to exhibitions or a lot of other things. With no walking I had to learn to photograph in a different way. I drove around a lot looking for lay-bys and field gates. More time was spent photographing birds from the kitchen and the car. My garden got a makeover to encourage butterflies and bees. I treated myself to a macro lens and, after a bit, a new camera. Last September I had a knee replacement. Changes again. We all have to adapt as we get older. I sat at the limekiln and thought how busy the moor used to be. Workers digging limestone., the kiln at work, waggons and horses, noise and bustle. The scars are still there. Now the limekiln sits alone. Listening to the wind. Watching the birds and butterflies and the passing walkers. Crumbling a bit as we all do. Eventually.

This morning I was thinking about my new contacts on ipernity. The randomness of it. A decision to move here. Coming on a particular day. Uploading those photos. And people choosing to look. Then contact, a connection. I thought of spider silk floating in the air until it meets a stem, a flower, a leaf. The world wide web. In the afternoon I walked round the Red Myre. Still looking for orange tips. Instead I met a jogger and we stood chatting like old friends. Connecting. Afterwards I sat in the sun among the lady's smock waiting for butterflies. They flew around me. Bursts of camera activity when they settled. A bird calling to me "Do it, do it, do it." Then in among the rushes a movement caught my eye. A tiny spider weaving a web. Contact. Connecting !

I joined ipernity a week ago and have been thinking about writing articles ever since. The trouble is I've tried blogging several times but somehow it's never taken. However, I'm a Flickr refugee and the shock of the makeover with the resulting need to move has shaken me up which is having a plus side. So, I'm a little old woman who leads a very quiet life and passes through the world almost invisibly. And this is how I like it to be. Which means there's not much to write about ! Haiku ! I've just remembered that, when I retired 16 years ago, I began to make up haiku. Every day I went out walking. I live in a beautiful place and I looked around me. What I saw felt new and exciting. I had all the time in the world and, having to say something in seventeen syllables was fun, a puzzle, a bit of a challenge. So here I am in another new situation. I'm going to begin with haiku and see where they take me.

I've had a visitor for two days. An old friend who lives at the other end of the country. We were naïve innocents from Glasgow, living in Paris and London in the sixties and thinking we were sophistication personified. Now we are a pair of crabby old women laughing over our youthful antics, getting irritated with each other, knocking back the wine and comparing notes on our crumbling bodies. By the end of the visit we're tired and part with relief, both too used to our own company and our own way. But the memories and the fondness remain.

For years I have walked round Birnie and Gaddon. It's a popular nature reserve so I often go early morning or late evening. Today I went early looking for orange tips. The lady's smock is out and it's their favourite. Walking up the path to where it grows I slowed down, enjoying the green smells and the sun through the grass. I photographed a dandelion, appreciating how still everything was. When I reached the lady's smock there wasn't a butterfly in sight but it didn't matter. I had been reprogrammed. There were other things. Gorse and buttercups. Bluebells. Red campion. Queen Anne's lace. More dandelion clocks. And the sun coming through the grass.