Quickly posting. Hopefully just in time. Sharing my January painting from A Year of Mary offered by the lovely Effy Wild (check her out on Patreon). I painted mine in February and totally loved everything about her and the process. She's very Effy-esque but that's okay. The quote is from Mary Oliver's poem, The Summer Day. And i totally love the question. The poem is all about pausing and observing and absorbing nature. 

She fed my soul. February was a trial in many ways and I'm very thankful for so many things which had broekn being fixed. Covid is rampant in Thunder Bay, it feels, getting closer at work and we have another lockdown tomorrow with schools closed again for 2 weeks. But still so very much to be thankful for. Zoom call tonight with family for my stepdaughter Nessa's birthday. Chaotic and lovely to just sit back and absorb the laughter and chatter.

Posting a couple of photos. One with its accompanying haiku.

Look closely at this last photo. Look again. Do you see the heart? I took the photo at Kakabeka Falls and was taken with the patterns of the stripped bark. Not until I got home and studied the photo further did I spy the heart. LLesson learned. That's how my February was. I had to look closer but the joy and the love were all still there. I just had to keep looking.

Wishing you days of love and joy. 

Actually neither cat has fleas. But a big-sounding noisy critter is living in our bedroom wall and our basement keeps flooding with water from the tree root problem. So, after being awakened too early on my daytime sleep the other day by this scarily noisy critter (a squirrel i think), I noticed Spook mightily scratching herself on the bed and thought to myself that the cat having fleas would be a good title for a story, a good end to a long seemingly neverending list of things wrong with life and the world in general. I could also easily call this post "And i forgot to post!" Which i did, yesterday. I remembered at some point during the day then i just had a lovely-paced, very relaxing rest of the day and forgot all about this until I was almost tucked up in bed waiting for my tea to boil. And it was midnight.
Anyway, here I am. I could also call this post "And I almost forgot to post" because I did!  I have nothing too insightful or interesting. Yesterday I finished my 3rd 100 days of haiku (#100daysofsybwriting) and started another one in tandem with #the100dayproject on instagram. (#100daysofsybhaiku) And I'm on day 32 of #365daysofsybwriting This little practice keeps me grounded and creating daily. I'm not sure i can give it up at the moment! Intagram has changed its layout so my haiku is page 2 of a 2 page post but I wanted to share some here. Think that had happened before my previous post actually. I really like the first big image and resultant haiku here on creativity. Hope you enjoy them.
​Expressing myself through the haiku has led to me not needing to espress myself so much here. People comment that they are like peeking into my diary or like an advent calendar where each day you never know what you'll get. How true is that of all our lives? 
Trusting that the new year has been gentle with you. Live your best life!