Hello, Poetry Friday friends! I hope this finds you well, as I missed the round-up last week.
I’ve been feverishly working on a new website, hoping to completely transition off WordPress by the end of June. We’ll see. There are a few things that I am not sure about as far as how they’ll work, and I think the best way is to just publish the site so I can see firsthand what will happen with posts and comments.
Part of the reason it’ll take a long time to transfer over is that my archive of blog articles here on The Apples in My Orchard reaches a count of over 2,100. I’ve started to delete some of the non-essential ones, drafts that didn’t get published, and some of my Silent Sunday posts, but transferring them all over will be impossible. Yet, I don’t want to lose those pieces.
I ask that you visit my new website and check out all the tabs on the menu that runs across the top of the page. I was thrilled that this was easy to set up and that now, when you click a topic on the menu, the site takes you there without any trouble. This has been a long-standing problem for my WordPress site, and I’ve run out of patience in trying to fix it.
As I said, we’ll see.
Here is the new site: https://caroljlabuzzetta.com/ Please sign up with your email to receive a newsletter or specials from my website. Thank you.
It is meant to showcase the books I’ve compiled, authored, and published. Most of you know that I’m an Indie Publisher as well as an Indie Author. My small, one-woman publishing house is called Northern Loon Press.
I sat down this morning and counted all the haiku I wrote this month – there were over twenty, plus some other free verse poems. Tonight, I wrote this:
Spring Peepers
It’s raining, the drops filling the pond
At the end of the road
Where the heron stood
Last week
Spring peepers arrived days after the
Heron’s visit, singing in unison
Since
Day, night, night, day,
The singing waxes and wanes but is
Never replaced by complete
Silence
The Heron has not returned
You’d think he’d want
An easy meal
The peepers keep singing
Right through the rain
Calling a mate…
It’s time
Spring is here.
© Draft, Carol Labuzzetta, 2026
I also finished a book about writing Haiku, by Bruce Ross. I’ll be reviewing that in the coming month. It is a worthwhile read and will reside on my reference shelf.
Take care and be well,
Carol
Congratulations on your new website, Carol! I love the observation in the first stanza “where the heron stood / last week” Lovely!
Thanks, Irene. I am still looking for the heron to return. LOL.
Website tech can be fun until it’s not. 🙂 I’m headed over to look at the new one!
Thanks, Karen. I’d be interested to know your opinion. I thought I had researched it enough but now that it’s up, I’m finding some deficiencies – enough that I probably won’t be able to get rid of my WordPress. Thanks for stopping by.
I’m certainly no expert in websites! I’m curious about what kinds of deficiencies you’re finding? I can only imagine what a huge task it is to try to fully migrate to a new platform.
Hi Karen, there are mainly two issues for me. I) I have over 2,000 posts on my word press site. There is no way to archive them in the new site except for copy and paste. I even asked about it and the platform’s tech support suggested I just keep my WordPress blog open.
2) I cannot see anyway for people to leave a comment on any page except for using the contact box, which is okay but not optimal.
And lastly, I like to include photos with my posts and there is no where to put them. I used the site for two weeks before I bought it and the ease of set up and simplicity of how it looks won me over but not sure I’m going to keep it past this year. I’ll try to reduce my WordPress to a free site but not sure that will work either because of all my media and posts. I also do not think it’s great to be posting all over.
I’m still going to post to WordPress this week for he round up. Thanks for asking!
Oooh, those do sound like challenges! I don’t know much about WordPress or the new platform. Keep us posted!
Thanks, Karen, I will. What platform do you use for your blog/website?
Carol, I’ve been using Blogger for my blog since 2005. I use GoDaddy for my website and it has a feature that automatically pulls in my blog posts, so I don’t have to do anything to keep links to the blog showing up on the .com site. (You can see what I mean here.) karenedmisten.com needs lots of work at the moment, as I recently changed the template and I haven’t taken the time to add much detail back to the overall site. But because that url is out there (usually in bios and on my book covers, etc.) I need to maintain that presence. The automatic link to the blog is really helpful.
Thanks for letting me know what you are using. I agree with maintaining a presence – that is key. And I need to be able to archive my posts and make them available (as they are now). It’s a major issue with the new author website. I do have my own URL for that now – which in the end will help. And I own the domain for The Apples in My Orchard, which does help with consistency. It’s always a work in progress, isn’t it?
We don’t have peepers where I live but I heard them last year in Iowa in May and WOWZA! Definitely “Day, night, night, day”!
They can be so loud! They are fun to listen to though! What part of Iowa were you in? My eldest went to Iowa State in Ames for 9 years (while he got his PhD.
Beautiful and peaceful. I love the joy of the peepers…but I sort of miss the heron, too.
Thank you Linda. The heron’s visit was the best part. I’ve continued to look for him and he hasn’t returned. Thanks for thinking of me with the poetry month postcard, too! I enjoyed receiving it.
Carol, your new webpage is lovely. I tried all the links. They are all good, except for the LinkdIn and Instagram links. Your Heron and peepers poem is great. I like the short lines ending each short stanza–Silence, Since, etc. They made me read the poem more carefully.
Thanks, Denise. I’ll check into those links. Glad you like the Heron poem, too.