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Thinking About What To Write About Next …

My mind is filled with so many ideas, it’s difficult to settle down to actually write anything, sometimes, like right now!
I had a fabulous idea to write about a plant that’s going well in our garden, making it a combination of giving information about herbs, and also including poetry, which is a very much favoured way to write for me.

This new plant has flowered, and I’ve noticed the bees around the place are very much attracted to the sweet little flowers that grow on this plant, which is new to me, having been icluded in a seed mix to plant out ro attract butterflies, and as I’ve noticed, also bees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borage

The plant is borage, and if you click on the link, you’ll see the lovely little blue flowers, and large leaves.

What I wanted to do, and may still do, is to write a bit about Borage, and how it came to be growing in our garden, and then post an Acrostic poem using “B O R A G E” as the starting letters of a six line poem about this delightful new plant …

So that’s one thing, but I also possibly could be writing more of the Cosy Murder Mystery Novel I’m possibly more that half way through, but have been more or less ignoring for far too long. I’ve also been ignoring this website of mine, even though I actually love writing and connecting with other people online!

And of course there are the other things on this website of mine, which is relatively new to me, and I’m not really sure about how to use effectively … I haven’t been loving it, so have been ignoring it, which anyone who comes here may realise.

The image above is definitely NOT what I wanted to post here, which proves how much I still need to learn about how to use this website! I’d actually taken that photograph for something else entirely, the monthly newsletter I create and distribute in my local town, Mallala.

The photo was of one of the entertainments at the 2025 Mallala Christmas Street Party, which curiously takes place mostly at the local oval, rather that the street …

Anyway, enough of this, it’s time to move on to other things now, and I promise I’ll be back again soon, as long as I manage to actually manage to get here again! Haha, at least my sense of humour is still working!

meaning in life, Philosophy

Some Day …

There are a number of things on my ‘Some Day …’ list. It isn’t a ‘Bucket list’, there aren’t any big and amazing things on this list, but it’s just a list of things I think I’d like to do, some day. One of the things I’d like to so some day, is to go up on a hot air balloon.

This is one that is also on other people’s Bucket Lists, so the two things, the lists, are not entirely different things, I just think the term Bucket List is a clumsy title for a list of good, or exciting things to do, some day.

It sounds like a container for waste products, not a holder for possible wonderful things to do. So the hot air balloon one is there. I’ve toyed with idea of going up on a glider. I’ve seen them up in the sky, not to high up, but floating up where birds might be. That seems lovely and peaceful, although I believe it might be a little bit more noisy than it is in my imagination.

I like birds, a lot, and the idea of sharing the sky with the birds is a think I’d like to do. some day. Being in a plane doesn’t feel anything like that, it is a totally unnatural thing to me. But I like being with birds on the ground too, so that’s what I do, I watch them as they get about at my place, which is also their place. I live here, and the birds (many of them) live here too.

Photo by Flickr on Pexels.com

I see so many sparrows, every time I look or go outside. Some people think sparrows are boring, but they have their own interesting lives, and I enjoy watching them, and the other birds that live around here, all doing their own things.

Maybe some day I’ll do some study, and learn more about these birds who live here at and around our place. Or perhaps I’ll just go on being here with them. watching them, providing water to them, enjoying them …

I love observing Nature!

inspiration, meaning in life

Is Life Planned, or Random?

Seasons come, seasons go, we know what to expect, and can plan for that. We sow our seeds, the earth and the sun so what they do, clouds bring shade and rain. Things happen, seeds become plants, become food and we thrive.

Or it doesn’t go that way at all, sometimes, the rains don’e come when we expect them to, no clouds, a blazing sun, viscious winds, the ground an empty womb, nurturing only starvation … Can we plan for such times, never knowing when they may come, or not with any certainty. Random is always the unplanned thing, that brings changes, ones we’d never expected.

Is this a bad thing, or good? Change from farming, sell up, move, become something else entirely, but holding within you all of the knowledge gained, watching, working with Nature and using such gained wisdom in new ways. Unplanned, random good coming from bad.

But really, the things are only what you name them, and many are too quick to name, write off, move on, forgetting the possibility of good coming from bad, and only remembering the bad, hating it, blaming it, reviling it, railing against it, making it the main focus of life. But that bad season, could have been a good season, if you’d learned from previous ‘bad’ seasons, and planned for whatever might come, rather than the planned thing you expected to come …

I’m not a farmer, I’m a writer. I’ve written about many of my life experiences, the ‘bad’ ones the most, particularly early on in my writing ‘career’. Abuse, illness, accident, they’re there, but the words that came from those remembered experiences have brought peace of mind, understanding, and even joy.

Life has happened, in unplanned and random ways, as it always has and always will. Randomness is the truth of these things, that’s what I believe. Nature goes with what happens, plants release seeds and sometimes they fall on barren land, with no rain to nurture seed to plant, to food, to plenty. Animals, including this human animal we are, deal with what is there, when it’s there, working to provide for the ‘bad’ times in and when we can, if we think to do so.

These things are what happens, some of them shaped by us, or more likely by Nature, and we deal with them, as best we can. Or we don’t, forgetting what we should always remember, from what our random lives have shown us …

inspiration, poetic forms, poetry, writing exercise, writing prompts

A Sonnet Response

I like writing prompts, a lot. So when I saw this challenge, ‘EIF Poetry Challenge’ I gave it a good look. Sonnets are lovely. With a sonnet, you know what you’ve taken on. There will be only 14 lines, with a set number of ‘beats’ in set places, and there will be a rhyming scheme of a particular kind (one of two, actually, but not terribly different from each other.

So, the call for a sonnet, how could I resist? The person calling for sonnets is someone I know, as much as one ‘knows’ people online. She had got on board with something I’m working on, and so adding all of this together, of course I’d get a sonnet into the action.

When I got myself ready for this EIF Poetry Challenge, I’d intended looking into a sonnet I might already have, but the keyboard called to me, and changed my mind. It was time to write a new sonnet. And so, in accordance with instructions, here is my sonnet.

I hadn’t necessarily meant to write a poem about Covid-19, but that’s the main thing these days, isn’t it? And that’s the way it went, but with a possibly different slant on it, and bringing another ‘big thing’ into the action. A thing that may or may not be connected.

This is my new sonnet:

No Decent Reason …
What on Earth is the reason, for this disease?
A rhetorical question, but is there a ready answer?
Is it response for doing whatever we please?
Have we become Nature’s deadliest cancer?

We’re killing things with barely any restraint –
With no regard for damage that we’ve caused,
Murdering creatures – no avenue for complaint
Wanting things right now. If only we’d paused …

Covid-19 a symptom of devastations,
Inflicted on habitats, trees cut down.
Some put all the blame on developing nations,
But the destroyer here is the big end of town …

How do you explain to a little kid,
The selfish reasons for what us oldies did …

inspiration, meaning in life, New Ideas

Writing Inspiration – Accidental or Formal

When you write creatively, you’re a writer. Many of us take a long tome to actually acknowledge this, and claim the title, but it’s true, if you write, you’re a writer. And if what you write is poetry, then guess what, you’re a poet. The words don’t have to be published, or even shared with anyone else. There are many writers and poets who have many written words tucked away, hidden from the world that may be desperate to read those words, without realising, as you don’t realise it either.

So, there are many of us writers and poets. And of the many out there, what we all love is getting an inspiration, that lights the fire of our imagination and mind, and the words come. For some they feel they need that inspiration to come from something within themselves, or from Nature, or some such thing. Others feel fine using writing exercises, and things such as a five word challenge can be their inspiration.

Or an inspiration can be a happy accident, where two different things come together, adding up to, not two, but fifteen, and something far greater than the sum of its parts has emerged. Certainly, I feel my current writing adventure was one of those happy accidents, where a phrase, and an idea have come together, and an Anthology is on its way to coming into the world.

I enjoy five word challenges too though, and am finding that the more often I do them, the better I get at doing them. I know many of my writing friends enjoy doing five word challenges, because members of writing groups I’m involved in do them, and produce marvellous pieces of writing with them.

Nature, though, Nature is my biggest inspiration, in my life, and in my writing. My usual writing position at home, during the day, gives me a window into Nature, with flowers, trees, creatures, and the sky all bringing me peace, ideas, and conflict too, sometimes – all inspirational.

My front yard inspiration

Today I was watching an ant. It was in my back yard, I was standing watching the goings on in and around some ant nests, and one ant was carrying something, so I decided to watch where it would take it. WE often think of ants as being purposeful workers, but this ant wandered around one tiny area, about 30cm x 30cm, carrying that burden over difficult areas, backwards forwards, over and under weeds, toward a next hole and away, back again. Then I looked away and the ant was gone!

Well the ant of course could have still been there, because there were ants all around the nests, but I couldn’t see one carrying that piece of whatever it was. And of course, to me, all of the ants around that nest look exactly the same. I was only able to see that particular ant because of the ‘whatever it was’ it had been carrying. So, burden gone, interest gone? No not really – the idea of carrying a burden, a thing, giving one a sense of purpose is definitely an interesting idea to write about, in many ways.

What could it mean to the one with the burden, or to be burdened and to put it down, and go back to normal life. Does carrying, or having a possession make you more important than others, or give you a sense of purpose? These ideas could certainly be inspirations for many kinds of writing.

Inspiration is the thing that takes our writing from ordinary, to something more, something greater, from the mundane to meaningful and perhaps magnificent. Use the world as your inspiration and look with eyes, and mind, and all of your other senses, if need be. Inspiration fed gives much to the writer, seek it, feed it, benefit from it. The world needs your words!