You have done it on your own the craft of poetry garnering your words identifying your voice never mixing metaphors unless you mean to accenting with alliteration tackling subjects from waxing lyrical about nature to sounding the clarion calls to activism in a world gone mad…
Now, why not try the delights of collaboration… a dance á deux a menage á trois an orgy of poesie with multiple poets if you will bat stanzas back and forth ekphrast a painting or photograph by a friend why do it on your own when you can do it together become a collaborator…
Ten months ago, our very own Melissa Lemay, started an online journal of collaborative poetry, Collaborature so why not head over there and have a gander at all the exciting poems that have been submitted and then reach out to another poet to have a go at collaboration…
1 – I am grateful to my daughter for coming round and doing some housework for Barbara and I, which, as she said, is also a chance to spend some time together…
2 – I am glad that once a month I have to take samples to a microbiology lab for testing and the drive back takes me “over the tops” and include this beautiful view…
3 – I am grateful that my work gives me a subscription to Adobe Suite, including PhotoShop, which, amongst other things, I use for resizing the pictures for this website; however, I promised t0 show you what I use the various textures I have shown each week and I thought to use the initials of Ten Things of Thankful…
The top version has had the inner area of the letters coloured in with an orange gradient. The second version has four different textures, all of which you have seen – faded blue paint on wood, fallen Autumn leaves, a microfibre cloth and tree bark. In numbers three and four, the orange layer has been placed over the textrures and different ways of blending the two layers have been applied.
That’s the magic of PhotoShop…
4 – I bought this bunch of flowers to cheer up my patrner and they have lasted really well…
5 – Following the disruption of moving the garden round to accomodate the roofers, I got everything back where it needs to be – all the bulb containers are to the fore, ready for Spring and indeed some of them are jumping the gun… The strange patches of colour are chilli powder to educate a cat that these pots are not it’s toilet…
6 – I have agreed to start a new collaborative poem with a friend to be published in another friend’s online journal – Collaborature…
7 – I finished inputting all the fabrics in my spreadsheet in preparation for the A to Z Challenge (blogging) 2026 – I found 139 different fabrics and if you include fibres and processes 254 items which need to be sorted and grouped into just 26 alphabetical items – hence the spreadsheet – I love a good spreadsheet!
8 – My salary (1/2 time as I am) and my pension will both come into my account on the same day – tomorrow – Yayyy! (Pension precesses as it is every 28 days exactly)
9. I spoke to my Sister in Nova Scotia and to my Critique Partner in Minneapolis which two meetings take place every other Sunday, and both of which I enjoy immensely…
10 – I got through my TToT…
Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…
Demonstrators gather during a “No Kings” protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 18, 2025.
A nation birthed by bold revolution now suffering a jumped-up would-be King despite the founders’ strong constitution how could their law be such a broken thing – poisoned so, by the cunning fascist’s sting… The tyrant can’t be broken using force – garnered a band of brutish thugs of course but being laughed at – one thing he can’t stand marching in fancy dress, one such recourse a steadfast, strong and democratic band!
1 – I have virtually finished the layout of all the new Gelato Production Unit at work (remember the mess of pipework I showed you last week?) which means I can now proceed to writing the SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) for the plant. This is vital as if you open the wrong valve or leave the wrong one open, a potential £6-7,00.00 could be lost – you don’t want cleaning acid in your gelato mix…
2 – I am grateful to live in such a beautiful (Go’s Own) county – Yorkshire and this is a view I had to stop and photograph with a view to a painting – Beamsley Beacon emphasised by strong shadows on a levely Autumn sunshiny day…
3 – On a smaller scale, no unused corner – in this case of a snicket (Passgeway) – fails to be colonised by nature – I think this is a Lavateria…
4 – The Olive tree in our yard continues to darken its tiny fruit though I fear there is not enough sun to develop them further before I have to wrap the tree in frost protection for the Winter – however – one fully formed Olive has made it and by the Spring, when I unwrap the tree again, will no doubt have attained black ripeness…
5 – The roofers returned to fix and relace a few slates on the extension roof and renew the render along the coping stones and they also painted (and cleaned) the small upstairs window, which is otherwise inaccessibe…
6 – More bounty from this year – some quinces in my daughter’s garden – not sure if they are edible or only ornamental? I love to make Membrillo!
7 – Across the road from the above, I encountered this tree spirit…
8 – More Autumn beauty – better on the ground than on my car…
9 – No Ten of Thankful complete without a little texture – so from the trunk of the tree that shed the leaves above – any graphic artists amongst you, feel free to use…
10 – Thankful to have found Ten Things of Thankful this week…
Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…
I am one of the fortunate ones a member of the last cycle of breeding in the North American summer and as such I got to fly South past California – could have stopped there but by then I had the travel bug and I, and many of my cohort carried on to Mexico, not for the heat Oh no! We settled in the great pine forest in the mountains, where it was warm enough as long as we huddled together to survive the winter
We curtained the trees with our colour – the reason we are called monarchs allegedly – orange in honour of William the Third of England – William of Orange – so I guess we were named by the Brits before the proto-Republicans got their act together and kicked their oppressors out – anyway, the name stuck and no one thought fit to change it even now, when Americans are driven to hold “No Kings!” parades – we butterflies – the most numerous in North America retain our royal soubriquet and regal we were as we rose en masse from the Mexican trees to head North again for the summer and it’s not just for the food of course but for the perpetuation of the species
I would like to tell you of my life as a caterpillar and later a pupa but as I overheard a young teacher explaining to his class what happens inside the pupal case is so complete a transformation it’s as if we liquefy and alchemically transform into a completely new creature and with it, gone all memories of that earlier life – of course – we see them – the caterpillars our offspring munching their way through milkweed but I can’t imagine their lives ae very interesting – not compared to we adults, travelling thousands of miles seeing the sights, hanging out together and then becoming one of the sights ourselves – a wonder of nature!
That teacher also said that we are of the genus Danaus Which is perhaps the masculine of Danae upon whose great- great-grand daughter Zeus came as a shower of gold – and that is surely a fitting origin story for the naming of we Monarchs…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, it is Open Link Night and lillian invites us to submit a poem of our own choice and if possible, to join on Saturday to read them out live…
This poem came out of my writing group, where, after reading The Promotion by James Tate, we were prompted to write the compressed life story of a previous life as an animal…
“Four seasons in one day” sang Crowded House and as you draw nearer to the Equator all the seasons happen in every day’s cycle
In Tennerife, north side of the island you wake to blue skies and yet already a wisp of cloud pours over the lip of Mount Teide like the tentative sign of an eruption by this still hot to the touch at the top, relatively sleeping giant, but as the morning wears on the cloud finds it’s level and spreads less threateningly over the pine forests below the crater edge shrouding them in fog on out over the banana plantations that surround Puerto de la Cruz then on over the city itself where, just after lunch they deliver their own micro-seasonal rain hardly worth the unfurling of an umbrella but nurturing the bananas as reliable as clockwork except when the occasional Atlantic storm disrupts the proceedings and having delivered their promise, the clouds dissolve and the season of sunny evening takes their place…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Poetics, invites us to write about “micro-seasons” after the Japanese custom of dividing their year not just into four seasons but into seventy-two “micro-seasons” such as ‘frogs start singing’ and ‘crickets chirp around the door’…
1 – I am grateful that there is almost always a parking space just outside the gates of where I work my 2.5 days. There is a parking bay, occupied at night by residents of the adjacent houses and there is usually just one space beneath a tree which sports a lot of berries – currently ripe and so the birds feeding there leave little offerings on my car bonnet and roof (for which I am not so grateful lol).
2 – The tree mentioned above continues to unfold Autumn colours – not in a uniform way, but branchlet by branchlet – it is the same with many trees this year and I feel I am being shown something about Autumn that I haven’t seen before…
3 – I received this novel micro watercolour kit from my partner by way of a thank you for all the things I do for her for which she is grateful and I in turn for this…
The white thing at left is a wristband on which to wipe the brush…
4 – I have been involved for the last ten years, with the building of a mosque in Bradford, the city I work in. When I first started on the project, I was between jobs, and it gave me both income and a chance to keep my hand in with AutoCAD (computer draughtsmanship) and led to me working at an Architect’s office as the oldest person there, but in the office junior post lol. Now the mosque is nearing completion with the roof being put on the minaret tower which means the lift can finally be installed within the tower. The project has taken time because the money is raised from the community a little at a time, so the work progresses in fits and starts… I am not religious yet this is not the first sacred space I have been involved with as a designer ( I did work in Catholic churches when I lived in Ireland) and over the years, the ongoing role as project draughtsman to the mosque, has provided a little supplementary income, a chance to learn about Moslem culture, some enjoyable design opportunities and a number of friends. Within a year, my task there will come to a close and at 70, I feel this is a fitting time for me…
This is the area which would eventually become the Main Prayer Room on the ground floor and this is the state of the building when I was first brought in to survey and draw up the building “as built”
The Prayer Room almost complete and in use already…
The mosque is a modern building but these traditional Islamic geometrical designs which I had to draw up so that they could be cut out on a CNC router machine – the finishing touches to the Prayer Room! As well as a place of worship, this mosque has been designed as a community centre. Many of the mosques in Bradford were converted from churches, halls, even cinemas but this one was purpose-built and is the most far-sighted in offering many roles to its congregation and community…
5 – Another project that requires my AutoCAD skills, amongst others, is coming to fruition at my 2.5 Day Job at the gelato (and pudiing and cake) factory. We are installing a new gelato production plant, bought from a factory closing down in Eastern Europe some ten years ago and awaiting the space to be reassembled. The oldest brother in the family firm is the prime mover in this and he has been thoroughly enjoying himself assembling it all, drilling walls for pipework to pass through. My job is now to draw out the system with a view to writing and illustrating the SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) which we will have to teach the workers who will opreate it. What makes it complicated is the CIP system in which successive flushes of Acid, Alkali and Hot and Cold water must be used to clean the entire system between batches. Below is just a small part of the task…
These are the “Ageing” Tanks where the pasteurised mixture of milk, cream and a special thickener will b held before being flavoured and frozen into gelato.
Just a tint part of the labyrinth of pipes, and more importantly, valves needed to get the right fluids flowing to the right places and which must be opened and closed correctly to stop the wrong fluids contaminating the product – imagine drawing up this system…
6 – My post-holiday cold version 2 is slowly abating…
7 – We had a lovely visit to my youngest but one grandson and his girlfriend in their new flat in Sheffield (home of steel, cutlery and scalpel blades).
8 – The roofers return on Monday to repair a few slates and coping stones above the work they did last week on the extension fascias, soffits and gutters…
9 – Managed to think of things I am grateful for
10 – It is a grey day, but it is not raining, or blowing and I see the reservoir above the town has largely refilled after the Summer drought…
Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…
1 – I am profoundly glad that a ceasefire has begun in Gaza although a lot will depend on whether President Trump will continue to hold Netanyahu’s feet to the fire to carry on with the terms outlined – however, a ceasefire is a start…
2 – I am glad the second cold I have had in as many weeks is abating as we are supposed to be going to see my grandson and his girlfriend’s new flat tomorrow…
3 – I finally got around to finding someone to redo the fascias, soffits and gutters on the extension. The oood has been cut for two years…
The gutters have been up for about 45 years and had gone brittle and needed replacing…
There were some very tricky angles involved in cutting the wood and the guys did well working from the old wood as templates – job well done…
4 – The building work meaned moving half the garden away from the building but I am glad as it all needed rearranging with next year’s bulb containers coming to the fore…
5 – The Spider Orchid Lilies are still producing excuisite blooms when not much else is showing…
6 – My Rhubarb – started from a fragment attached to a pulled stem, is a good size now and I will put it in a bigger pot once it stops for the Winter and hopefully get “fruit” next year…
7 – Some plucky bulbs are jumping the gun for Spring – crocii, I think…
8 – the weather was good today allowing me to paint the new woodwork
9 – I have finished posting poetry/postcards for this year – even the bonus ones from the International list – here is my favourite painting of the challenge – it is “The Island” – Spinalonga, former leper colony made famous by Victoria Hislop’s book…
10 – glad to have thought of 9 lol…
Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…
October, you are no more the harbinger of Autumn The green elm with the one great bough of gold came in late August – the yellowing of drought stealing the march on your glorious displays and dooming those boughs to die with your first frost for those burned leaves made no antifreeze for the tree to suck back in before the leaves their final purpose fulfilled into the grass slip[ped] one by one… And too came branches near breaking with berries their colour near drowning out the last green leaves turning the trees a brown when seen from afar another false Autumnal hue and a feast too early for the migrant birds which land in October they will find the berries gone over, their bounty wasted and now the land is draped in true October colours we may be lulled into thinking the season too runs true but like those birds in coming hunger mired will Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due, awake to the unseasonal “beast from the East” or interminable drought or rain or heat? October you are not the only month no longer acting true to expectations – all is climate changed…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Dora in Poetics invites us to trip the October Light Fantastic and although that beautiful display has begun, it is not the whole story this year, and indeed, for coming years, and I find I cannot celebrate with unalloyed pleasure…
