The Apples in My Orchard

If you read my blog regularly, you know my husband and I are moving – a month from today! Yikes! We’ve come a long way cleaning out but still have more to go. Gone from the house are large pieces of furniture. My husband sold his Toro, Zero Turn Mower, yesterday. My china hutch sold and we might be selling a couple of recliners later today. A large moving sale is planned for the weekend of June 3rd-5th. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate but my husband has been working on cleaning out the garages so we will be okay if it does rain. As we know weather these days is very unpredictable. We had another hail storm at the end of last week. Springtime hail storms have become routine here. In 2020 there was a hailstorm in June that so severely affected our town, that almost every primary residence has resided! Or, at least it seems that way. Cleaning out, packing, and moving boxes have been a way of life for the last month and will continue to be so for another month.

Loose Ends

Our boys are slowly drifting into town to have their last visits to our house. Our middle son, 22 years of age, came in for dinner Saturday night. He lives about two hours away but is busy, so we haven’t seen a lot of him. He’s been able to make it to our cabin with his girlfriend for visits and that has been great. But, I told him I was missing him last week and he agreed to come home for a steak dinner. As he said, “he’d never refuse a steak!”

Our youngest son is twenty years old. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is here now. We’ve been able to get all the boys off of our health insurance as they are no longer dependents. But eye exams are still covered under an external policy. Ben is here to visit but also here to get an eye exam. He is an artist so protecting his sight and keeping his eyes healthy is very important. We’ve been meaning to get him in for a while, but with the move, it became a higher priority.

Our oldest son will be moving by the end of summer as well. He spent the last nine years at Iowa State University which is about four hours away from us. He is 27 years old and came in for Mother’s Day weekend, earlier this month. He’s busy as well, finishing his Ph.D. dissertation and job hunting.

A Poetry Reading

I was late to post to the Slice of Life forum last week. I wrote my blog but with everything going on, I forgot to post to the forum until about 9:30 in the evening. This month I published my own book of poetry. There are three sections in the book. Section one focuses on nature poetry. Since I draw a lot of my inspiration for writing from nature, it made sense to put some together in a book. The second section is what I call personality poetry. And, the third is haiku. The back matter of the book contains observations I made while writing haiku with my third-grade Writers’ Circle over six years (2011-2017). This section also offers writing resources for those who want to try haiku with their children or students.

Friday night, I had an opportunity to participate in a live poetry reading! Although I was nervous, I was also excited. The reading was at a gallery that has carried my handcrafted jewelry for the last eight years. They know me as a jewelry artist but now they see another side of me. I read the following poems:

Ode to an August Monarch

Ode to Milkweed

My Gardens

The Lone Bur Oak

A Water Poem: A Wee Drop

A Loon’s Day

An Urban Campus

Insomnia

Haiku on Loons

Haiku on Niagara Falls

Some of my poetry friends have graciously asked me to share a snippet of my reading. Here is a video of my reading the poem A Loon’s Day.

Today is Slice of Life Tuesday. Thank you to TwoWritngTeachers.org for creating and hosting this forum! I’ve participated since 2017 and come to appreciate the camaraderie and support from other teachers and authors. Please check out their page for links to more great poetry!