Joy. My word of the year. I’ve been finding joy, conversations about joy, unexpected joy, memes and verses about joy, joyful thoughts, actual joy, songs about joy, poems, faces that express joy! What a joy!
I took this photo at night with my phone camera. The stars were so brilliant, but it was quite breezy and the sunflowers danced to the rhythm of the wind gusts. Still. The stars were gorgeous pinpricks of light, and the movement of the sunflowers so graceful. I love this photo.
Photo by Angie Quantrell, Yakima Valley, summer night
How Do You Haiku?: A Step-by-Step Guide with Templates
Written by Danna Smith
Plumbago Press
September 1, 2023
Happy book birthday to How Do You Haiku?: A Step-by-Step Guide with Templates! Congratulations, Danna! I’m so excited to read this book.
Not only because I was one of the contributors (I am truly honored to included) . . .
(the following list is taken from Danna’s book page on Amazon)
Contributing Poets
Includes haiku by contributing poets Kate Coombs, Nancy Etchemendy, Matt Forrest Esenwine, Raven Howell, Linda Hoffman Kimball, Amy Losak, Bobi Martin, Angie Quantrell, Sydell Rosenberg, Lee Wardlaw, and Linda Whalen.
but because I LOVE haiku. I love writing haiku, being outside in nature, finding amazing natural wonders, taking photos, and coming back home to pen haiku about my discoveries.
PLUS. This is a how-to book. With templates. Whoohoo! What a great resource!
Amazon Blurb:
An excellent resource for at home or in the classroom
From the author of Peek-A-Boo Haiku (Simon & Schuster) comes a haiku how-to handbook. Haiku is a Japanese poetry form, but it’s more than just a short, three-line poem. It’s an opportunity to slow down, go outside, and experience the world in a new way. Haiku is a “snapshot” of a moment in nature (if you blink, you might miss it!), and it’s a powerful way to show compassion for all living things.
This book will help you understand haiku so you can create poems with powerful words and images. Each chapter contains examples from Japanese haiku masters and current poets. The included activities and templates will guide you through fun ways to “haiku,” including painting poem stones for your garden (Kuhi), creating haiku comic strips, and writing group poems with your friends (Renga). How Do You Haiku? This handbook will show you how— step-by-step.
Congratulations, Danna!
Danna Smith
Danna Smith is a poet and award-winning author of over twenty-five books for children.
When she was young, a pencil was her favorite toy. She grew up weaving words into silly poems or stories that sparked emotion. She wrote her first poem when she was eight, her first short story when she was ten, and her first picture book draft when she was seventeen.
Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, she currently lives and creates in beautiful northern California wine country.
It is so true. The meme where one day, the zucchini is tiny but the next it is ginormous. I searched my garden 2-3 days before this day. Nothing. Maybe a tiny fingerling. One at the most. Then comes this day. BAM. Eight fully ready to eat zucchinis.
Also tomatoes, wax beans, and green beans. I wasn’t even planning on harvesting. But once I saw the zucchini, I knew I was overdue.
Lunch was this. So delicious. I would eat this every day if the tomatoes and rustic bread always tasted so good. A little butter, spicy brown mustard, tomato slices. Done.
And for dinner, we had a two-bean, fresh corn off the cob, red onion, cherry tomatoes, basil, olive oil, and balsamic salad. Yummy! Don’t you just love summer garden meals?
But I need some more recipe ideas for the beans. I can’t keep up with them. I give them away, eat a ton, freeze a few (not a great option since we live in the RV-storage space is at a premium). We’ve had stir fry, meat packets including beans, and potato bean onion ground turkey soup.
Ideas please! What is your favorite fresh green bean recipe?
I grew up reading those cartoons and comics that featured characters shining a magnifying glass on something on the ground with the sun shining through the glass. A fire always occurred! 🔥At the least, SOMETHING felt the heat.
Well. The grand and I left this tripod magnifying glass in the shade on my wooden potting bench. Wouldn’t you know, I walked by later with the laundry basket and smelled smoke. What??!!! Sure enough, the shade was gone and the sunshine glared brightly through the glass, burning my bench!!! Eek! Note to self: Keep magnifying glass shut up in the shady TARDIS (my tool hut).
And just look what showed up a few days later in my honey’s The Far Side Gary Larson Desk Calendar! Hahahahaha
P.S. Does anyone know what this paper bug is actually called? Because of the massive forelegs (for its size), I wondered if it was a relative of a praying mantis. But the rest of the body doesn’t seem to fit that category.
Every year, we have a pair of flycatchers nest in our parking shelter, an old cattle loafing shed. They LOVE this space to nest. Sadly, the first batch of hatchlings were all destroyed by a variety of cannibalistic birds! It was terrible. But I’m happy to say that all 4 in batch 2 have made it to the fledgling stage, are flying around willy-nilly, and will soon learn to hunt for themselves (the above exhausted parent and I both agree this needs to happen very soon).
Last week my honey took me rock hunting. I have a thing about rocks. We thought we would explore a dirt road up in the mountains, one that required the 4×4. Packed a picnic lunch and off we went. According to what we “thought” our daughter had said (a regular off-roader), the road ended up in Cowiche.
It was a hot but gorgeous day. So very dry everywhere (except where the wildland firefighters had just finished putting out a fire-we met them on their way back down the one-lane dirt road!). The desert needs some rain!
We stopped off for our picnic lunch in the shade of huge pine trees. We “thought” we were well on our way to the other end of this road. Hahahahahaha The joke was on us!
The dirt road, complete with rocks, potholes, and 4×4 climbing options, kept going up. We’d hit the top of a hill, think we were as high as we were going, have beautiful views across the top of the hill, dip down for 100 feet, then head straight back up. When we saw Mt. Rainier off in the distance, we knew our expectations were not correct.
So. Maybe the road ended up out in Tampico, way out west from where we live. But there was no sign of any going down. Just up, up, west, up, up, up. We resigned ourselves to get home really late.
Regardless of the long distance, heat, and dust, we had exceptional views. For a hot day in July, I was amazed at how many wildflowers were still in bloom.
And good thing for us, there were two cell towers! Way out in the middle of nothing. I finally decided to just call the daughter. “Where are we going to come out? Where are we?”
And after some thinking, she finally figured it out-just as we pulled off to look out over a valley with what we suspected was Rimrock lake, AND Mt. Rainier, she said, “Oh, that’s probably Jump Off Joe. There should be an old building you can go in.”
I looked right, and there it was, a bit further up the road on a different rock spur. Wow! Jump Off Joe (named for obviously sad reasons) is an old fire lookout tower. Pretty creaky if you go inside, and I was walking careful! But the views are fantastic!
Also. We did not hike it. We thought we were driving a through road. Nope. We had to turn around and drive back down, between 12-13 miles from Highway 12. The hike is only 10 miles RT, but also. You have to work it to finish that hike! The only other people we saw were the firefighters, dirt bikers, and a group of 8 women driving their 8 Subarus on adventure (the guest book signature said that). We figured it out as they flew past us kicking up clouds of fine dust.
Look at that view, both the handsome guy and Mt. Rainier. Just beyond the lookout is a very steep drop-off. Definitely keep track of small children in this area.
Rimrock Lake and Mt. Rainier. No wonder the mountain kept getting so close! This is not Cowiche OR Tampico.
It took us about an hour and a half to drive back down the road, using first and second gear. But we stopped at the Tieton River so I could stand in the cool water. Ahhhh.
Next time we go rock hunting, I will talk with Chelsie first. Just to make sure.
Love, Laughter, and Life 