Windows

Welcome to the Monthly Meet-Up Photo Challenge, posted on the first Tuesday each month. The theme of  WINDOWS is running throughout the year.

To join in please leave a link to one of your posts which includes a photo of a window. The post can be current or archive – sometimes it is fun to look back through your photos and old posts and rediscover them.

Three from me today:

Greenhouse shading creating pattern and atmosphere at Kingston Lacy

A window lighting the stairwell at Greenway House

And little Miss M painitng, looking out of my sitting room window a few weeks ago.

~

I’m excited to see the windows you are sharing with us this month!

Advertisement

Silent Sunday

500 miles with Granny

This Summer it’s all about finding shade

Last Saturday I took Master R and Little Miss M to Kingston Lacy, where there is a lot of shady woodland to explore

I just love their enthusiasm for finding leaves and bugs and beetles and the conversations they have about nature interwoven with fantasy, dragons, monsters and fairies.

And they way they burst into exuberance when faced with a long stretch of path to run – “Race you!”

Joyful days

The promise of ice cream

An iced coffee for Granny

Slow meanderings

And

Dappled light

Joining in with Cee’s Which Way Challenge

And Little Miss M and I clocked up another 2.5 miles towards our target of 500.

Other posts tracking our progress are  here, here.

and here

We have done 31.5 miles, only 468.5 miles to go! Can we do it!??!

It will be fun finding out!

I use Strava, an app on my iPhone, to record our distances. It is brilliant as we can see the map of our walks at the end of each one. The children have fun tracing our route and working out where we were.

Will you be going on any walks this weekend?

 

 

Shadow

remember

sweet scents of childhood

in green lanes

~

Join Cathy and me in our One-a-Week Photo Challenge,  by leaviing a link in the comments

and

Ronovan in the weekly Haiku Challenge. This week’s prompts: SWEET and SCENT

The photo is of Master R, taken in summer 2016 at Kingston Lacy, one of our favourite places for a day out.

 

Rich

Last Sunday I spent a glorious day at Kingston Lacy with my son and daughter and all 8 grandchildren.

4 of them are in the photo running across the amazing lawns at the end of 6 hours of fun packed outdoor meandering.

The children all sat on the grass for a while pondering what it would be like to be rich enough to live in a place like this. I felt rich beyond measure that we had all been able to spend such a fabulous day together – relieved I don’t have such a huge place to look after, and grateful to the National Trust for maintaining such a perfect place to entertain 8 children for hours on end in a natural environment.

Joining in with our Photo Challenge

next prompt

DEEP

Kingston Lacy Haiku

Yesterday I went to a ‘Haiku and other Short Poetry’ Workshop at Kingston Lacy, a National Trust property.

First warm-up exercise:

We played a Haiku ‘consequences’ type of game:

We were each asked to write the first line of a Haiku – five syllables, with a theme of Spring. Then fold the paper over and pass it round.

Then the second line with 7 syllables, fold over and pass it on

Then the third with 5 syllables, fold over and pass it on. The words in pink are the ones I wrote.

And then we read them out:

Bluebells under trees

Spring has sprung out of the soil

Holding the moment

*

Petals underfoot

Deeply inhale the blue scent

The trees are alive

*

Morning has broken

Stepping softly in the silence

Trip over with joy

 

It was fun to co-create and felt pressure free with only one line to write at a time.

I get such a buzz out of creating something with others, whether it is a design with my grandchildren or a Haiku or a Renga

 

 

Later we talked about flipping the first and the last lines to see if this would be an improvement, e.g.:

The trees are alive

Deeply inhale the blue scent

Petals underfoot

*

Holding the moment

Spring has sprung out of the soil

Bluebells under trees

*

And then used our own lines and flipping the first and last:

Trip over with joy

Deeply inhale the blue scent

Bluebells under trees

This seems like a fun way to play around with a Haiku to look for different emphasis and sometimes it seemed to create more poetic strength – I’m definitely going to try this one out in the Haiku challenges.

It was a fun workshop, I really enjoyed it, and then I had a wander around the house and gardens.

I’m just a teeny bit obsessed with bluebells at present. I bet you got that!

I love them for their fleeting beauty, their subtle yet heady scent and the way they mark the beginning of my most favourite time of the year, when all the Spring flowers burst forth in a soft fluffiness of colour.

 

A bluebell doodle

And they remind me of a bluebell time when love was in the air – oh that heady feeling, remembered each time I walk in woods carpeted in a soft purple-blue haze.

lying in bluebells

mirroring clear skies above

on high forever

*

Latin name for Bluebell: Hyacinthoides – that’s 5 syllables, the first line of a Haiku right there! Or maybe a better last line?

Trip over with joy

Deeply inhale the blue scent

Hyacinthoides

“Hyacinthoides non-scripta: The Bluebell’s Latin name, Hyacinthoides, comes from a Greek myth: when the Prince Hyacinthus died, the tears of the god Apollo spelled the word ‘alas’ on the petals of the hyacinth flower that sprang up from his blood. Non-scripta means unlettered and distinguishes this bluebell from the similar-looking hyacinth.” (from the Scottish Wildlife Trust site)

Does the scent of a Spring flower bring back happy memories for you?