Pot Pourri bag

This pot pourri bag is made from scraps of sheer curtain (we had to shorten the curtains when we had our rabbit Anya, as she would chew the edges that so elegantly puddled on the floor) and pot pourri from a second hand shop. The tag is recycled from a decorative cardboard box. The yellow string is from a curtain tie that Anya had chewed to pieces. You can see more of my pot pourri bags here and here.

I'm going to make several more of these as I have plenty of the right materials. I'm thinking of setting up an Etsy or Folksy (UK equivalent of Etsy) shop to sell things like this. What do you think?

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police dog training -
rabbits run nervously
around the field edge.

rhododendrons

raindrops

on rhododendrons -

doves gently coo.

I posted this photo and haiku last May, but it is perfect for yesterday's walk round the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. It was a very wet day but the rhododendrons and magnolia were beautifully in bloom and plenty of birds were singing. We found some very friendly great tits, who would have fed from our hands if we had had any food for them!

Corstorphine Hill

It was definitely Spring up Corstorphine Hill when we walked up yesterday! There was a light mist early on that lifted later, leaving glorious blue sky. The temperature was mild, though with a slight chill. The birds were all singing wonderfully, we heard blackbirds, robins, chaffinches, great tits and blue tits. It was wonderful to hear a song thrush in full voice, one of my favourite songbirds, it is declining in number hugely these days and is a much rarer sound than it used to be. We also heard a great spotted woodpecker drumming. A group of four jackdaws were testing out holes in a dead tree as potential nest sites and squabbling a lot as they did so. The gorse was in bloom, looking quite wonderful (see photo above). There were also celandines, daffodils, violets, primroses and a couple of speedwells. The trees were wonderful too, the ash with its grey twigs and firm black buds, the hazel with tiny leaves just starting to unfurl and the sycamores well on the way to being in full leaf.

We saw a couple of rabbits in the undergrowth and some kudu at the top of the hill (in the African Plains area of the zoo!).

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leaves unfurl -
the chaffinch's chest brighter
than yesterday




an earlier version of this was published in Blithe Spirit, the members' journal of the British Haiku Journal

More Spring for Read Write Poem

Spring

Suddenly
sound travels differently
blackbirdsong counterpoints
playground shouts

the air is gentler -
scarves become annoying
and winter coats are left at home

dead looking wood
buds, unfurling
architecture
of entire new worlds.





Spring for Read Write Poem

New Job

I started a new job yesterday. You can read here about some of the reasons why I wanted to leave my previous job with Federation of City Farms. Sometimes a job that seems perfect beforehand, turns out not to be so in reality! My new job is with Evaluation Support Scotland, a charity that helps other charities to evaluate their work, both so the charity can learn how to offer better services and so they can report more effectively to their funders. They are increasingly helping environmental charities to evaluate their work. It's fewer hours which will give me time for more writing and crafting (and I'm also hoping to get some practical environmental voluntary work). It's a one year contract, which isn't ideal I suppose, in the current economic climate!