1.- Grateful to live here and have this view out of the kitchen window each morning (also a reminder of mortality and to make the most of each day…)
2.- This bougainvillea was in a sorry state at the garden centre but it seems to be doing just fine now…
3.- Our roadtrip holiday to france is all booked now – overnight ferry to Rotterdam, 3 days in Strasbourg, 4 days in Lyon and 2 days in Rheims on the way back to Rotterdam 2 weeks away, in all – 1,378+ miles in all…
4.- Weed of the Week!
Himalayan Balsam is having its moment – another immigrant which no doubt escaped some horticultural garden…
5.- Grateful that after the 5th heatwave, those plants that suffered like this willow, have the nowse to put out fresh shoots at the tips to keep going…
6.- Going through the big shopping mall in Bradford – encountered some free entertainment that was unexpected. Malls often employ people such as fae-painters (my late sister used to do it) and baloon animal makers but sand- sculpture artists are a new one it seems…
7.- I have sent all the Poetry Postcards on my two lists though I have 12 Bonus cards sent by Americans to the list of non-Americans (rather shorter this year) and though there is no obligation to reply to these, if they include an address (about half do not) then they are obviously hoping and I don’t like to disappoint…
8.- The weather has cooled down a little and is now very pleasant…
1.- We managed to get out yesterday, the first time Barbara has been out for some weeks – an invitation to visit our grandson, Jake, in Sheffield. His brother, Dillon was also theer and we brought him back home to the next village.
2.- Walking down to have lunch in the nearby park, I snapped this umbelliferous weed and was taken with the large size of the flowers (they are often quite small) – no idea what it is…
3.- but “weed” of the week – once prized for “carding” wool prior to spinning, is the teazel…
Also attractive as a mass planting…
4.- A less happy plant event (a hypograt) is this Silver Birch whose leaves are 95% burnt by the recent spells of hot weather. I hope it survives because I always park in its shade at the supermarket…
5.- Grateful for Yoirkshire Tea, which comes in a beautiful box decorated with scenes from Wensleydale (where the Cheese comes from). Yorkshire Tea is made stronger, for “hard” water areas such as is much of Yorkshire…
6. – The Poetry Postcard Festival is in full swing, I have sent just over half mine, so I am on schedule, and these are the ones i have received from groups 3 & ^ amd also from the International List – since there are so few non-Americans, we are listed additionaly, separately, for anyone who wisheds for the thrill of sending a postcard poem winging its way to foreign parts…
7.- I am not allowed to show you the poems themselves that I received, however, I can show you one of mine since I figure it will have arrived by now… This is near Kettlewell in the next Dale south of Wensleydale!
8.- It has not been too hot…
9.- Most of the pot plants in our garden have survived the heat and the wind -I am keeping an eye on the Wisteria though…
Ten Things of Thankful and all you good folks who sail in it…
There are two major blogging challenges that occupy my year, Te A to Z Challenge and PoPoFest and each year of each Challenge/Festival, I seem to heap ever higher expectations on my particpation, and this year has been no exception! For the postcards, I like to make my own and so in 2023, I used favourite photographs I had taken, in 2024, AI generated images that hadn’t made the final selection for particular projects but which were good in their own right, and for 2025, I decided to revive my very intermittent painting skills.
I have painted since my teenage years, which you can read about in this year’s A to Z here. However, whi;st I spent much of my life in applied arts, signwriting, graphic design and the like, pure painting languished – how many times did I take my paints on holiday only to bring them home unused – so making at least 31 postcard-sized paintings (in the end I did more for bonus cards sent to me on the International List) was a challenge. I produced about 4 on most weekends through July and August, sometimes working on 2 at a time as each dried. Many were watercolour, many acrylics, some mixed, and one pencil drawing.
I’ve decided to post them in a single Exhibition post (Exhibit if you’re American) together with their handwritten (excuse the writing, please) poems, which according to the aims of PoPoFest, are to spontaneously write an epistolary poem to a stranger, preferably one which references the image on the postcard. I blew up photographs from years past, which I had hoped would make paintings and in particular, pictures from Crete where we spent 6 months during lockdown in 2020 – enjoy…
The sky here is watercolour, the rest acrylic, but even in this scan, it’s possible to see the greater luminosity of watercolour…
Watercolour, which enables the “tunnel” to glow with reflected light
Watercolour
Watercolour – the subtelties of the sky didn’t scan well…
Watercolour and gouache on yellow, Elephant dung paper (I like its absorbency)…
Watercolour on buff, Elephant dung paper (this colour paper was a little too absorbent – too grabby)…
Watercolour with masking fluid. There should only have been 3 rails but I painted along the horizon line by mistake!
Watercolour
Pencil
Acrylic and watercolour on yellow, Elephant dung paper.
Acrylic and watercolour on yellow, Elephant dung paper.
Watercolour. The challenge here was to give the headland 3 3-dimensional form and not just make a flat cliff…
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Pencil, Watercolour, Acrylic.
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic. This allowed the nearly dry brush technique to create the reflections on the water.
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
This is the same subject as the previous painting but done in acrylic.
Top left is the photograph from which I made 3 different paintings…
20256 Received Poem Cento
This is a Cento poem made from lines found in all the Poetry Postcard poems I received in 2025…
I: Destruction
People are waking in the night, hearts racing, blood pounding dreams, fantasies, deceptions, escape The future is – unexplainable I try not to disturb them when I slowly reach my hand toward the culture that informed my values…
Cruel and crude, greedy old man — shouting, destroying the Bad King who demands from him, the Good Kingdom his world has become much smaller a pretty close second Puppets! Who is pulling the strings? Like my heart, they did not weep another missed connection, warped, failed shouting colour into gray streets where no one listens the beauty of the Badlands
We know so little – despite knowing so much Consumption society has chewed up spit out this vast and beautiful continent. transported in cardboard boxes to lockers at hub food discouraged now as our progress is torn down, a government being dismantled thinking then it can’t happen here. But it does I’m not sure there is enough of me today bobbing movement of nature you are missed daily somewhere unknown, another world away; it was there ….no more what if I told you still, I hope for forgiveness… the suggestion of brokenness the promise of wholeness we are all a part of everything – I can’t help hoping
II: Redemption if humans could fly, would we ever walk? around my imagination whatever you want’s okay! I close my eyes and breathe in fireweed your magic encapsulates me waiting for the perfect day that clear blue sky is here year round stairway to heaven sun drops sparkle air to reach, always, for the light someone is thinking of me remembering gratitude’s call to learn what was above and below today’s sun reluctantly begins to set…
Poets and lines:- Penelope Moffet 1-2, Jerrold Narland 3, Kerfe Roig 4, Susan Montgomery 5-6, Lawrence Pevec 7, Nancy R. Parr 8-9, Emily Bernhardt 10-11, Anon. 12, Grant Swados 13, Margie Ripperger 14, Anon. 15, Akua Lezli Hope 16, Jeannine Jordan 17-18, , Mary Mueller 19, Cassandra Bissel 20, Suzanne Harris 21-22, Karen Keltz 23-24, Ruth Vanklstine 25-26, Laura Gamache 27, Anon. 28, Lulu 29, Dava Wharton 30, Margaret Roncone 31-32, Rebecca 33-34, Muriel Karrr 35, Lisa Humphrey 36, Anon. 37-38, Nitya Prema 39, Karen Loeb 40, Amy Leonard 41-42, Donita Ries 43, Sandra Gadjewski 44, Diana Kolpak 45-46, Margaret Hill-Daniels 47, Cathy Wetter 48, Mary Skeen 49-50, Lynn Caldwell 51, Susan Vespoli 52, Julie Naslund 53, Angela Marie Ebba 54, Lula 55, P. O’Neill 56-58,Pence 59.
Poetry Postcard Festival 2025 Received Postcard Cento
I: Destruction
People are waking in the night hearts racing, blood pounding dreams, fantasies, deceptions, escape The future is – unexplainable I try not to disturb them when I slowly reach my hand toward the culture that informed my values… Cruel and crude, greedy old man — shouting, destroying the Bad King who demands from him, the Good Kingdom his world has become much smaller a pretty close second Puppets! Who is pulling the strings? Like my heart, they did not weep another missed connection, warped, failed shouting colour into gray streets where no one listens the beauty of the Badlands
We know so little – despite knowing so much Consumption society has chewed up spit out this vast and beautiful continent. transported in cardboard boxes to lockers at Hub Food discouraged now as our progress is torn down, a government being dismantled thinking then it can’t happen here. But it does I’m not sure there is enough of me today bobbing movement of nature you are missed daily somewhere unknown, another world away; it was there ….no more what if I told you still, I hope for forgiveness… the suggestion of brokenness the promise of wholeness we are all a part of everything – I can’t help hoping
II: Redemption if humans could fly, would we ever walk? around my imagination whatever you want’s okay! I close my eyes and breathe in fireweed your magic encapsulates me waiting for the perfect day that clear blue sky is here year round stairway to heaven sun drops sparkle air to reach, always, for the light someone is thinking of me remembering gratitude’s call to learn what was above and below today’s sun reluctantly begins to set…
Poets and lines:- Penelope Moffet 1-2, Jerrold Narland 3, Kerfe Roig 4, Susan Montgomery 5-6, Lawrence Pevec 7, Nancy R. Parr 8-9, Emily Bernhardt 10-11, Anon. 12, Grant Swados 13, Margie Ripperger 14, Anon. 15, Akua Lezli Hope 16, Jeannine Jordan 17-18, , Mary Mueller 19, Cassandra Bissel 20, Suzanne Harris 21-22, Karen Keltz 23-24, Ruth Vanklstine 25-26, Laura Gamache 27, Anon. 28, Lulu 29, Dava Wharton 30, Margaret Roncone 31-32, Rebecca 33-34, Muriel Karrr 35, Lisa Humphrey 36, Anon. 37-38, Nitya Prema 39, Karen Loeb 40, Amy Leonard 41-42, Donita Ries 43, Sandra Gadjewski 44, Diana Kolpak 45-46, Margaret Hill-Daniels 47, Cathy Wetter 48, Mary Skeen 49-50, Lynn Caldwell 51, Susan Vespoli 52, Julie Naslund 53, Angela Marie Ebba 54, Lula 55, P. O’Neill 56-58,Pence 59.
This cento poem takes lines from all the postcard poems I received during the July-August Poetry Postcard Festival (POPoFest) run by Cascadia Poetics LAB out of Seattle, USA. Most of the participants are American but it seems that many want to send a postcard to poets elsewhere and so all the no-US poets are sent out on a separate list – so that I, as a UK resident, was lucky enough to receive 24 from my Group 4 list and 19 “bonus ” cards from the International list.
Taking a line from each, two poems emerged, which I have chosen to present as Parts 1 & 2 since the bleakness of the first needs amelioration by the optimism of the second…
Serendipitously, Björn’s optional prompt on this occasion was the writing of letters and the idea of the POPoFest, is to write Epistolary poems to the recipient that reference the image on the postcard, to write spontaneously without editing. I chose to reclaim my painting skills this year and sent 31 original paintings out, one of which is shown below…
Dear Francoise A little peek on Google Maps shows me that Hedgesville is the most charming of small towns deep in W. Virginia’s Appalachians and I picked this card because it seemed “homespun” though in truth it is the creation of Artificial intelligence if I may call it that… I guess there are a lot of pictures of the work of crafters for an A. I. to learn from and oblige me though in truth I can knit, crochet, sew and embroider as well as any man I know but these little hearts could do as ideas for “real-world” art Much Love Andrew
I sent a card but cannot match it to the picture on the front of the card and so #9 is my poem only… If Emily Darby of Group 10 would care to DM me I would be most obliged…
Dear Emily They say we never really lose a memory but if the mind is a palace ever-expanding as we age then for sure, we forget how to find our way through the labyrinth of corridors where in places, ceilings have collapsed and should we revisit darker passages we should trail a long string so we may retrace our steps and not get lost for good. But with each exploration we may map the past – define our own archaeology…
Thank you for your lovely card of Mont Blanc, whose style I adore… Much Love – Andrew
Dear Chastity I write to you seated at a boulangerie in Boulogne on the last day of a roadtrip holiday around northern France. You are my first PoPoFest card this year and I must once again choose a card for an unknown correspondent so for this magical moment I have chosen a Witches Cat a la mode ‘Steam Punk’ and I hope it finds you well and equally looking forward to 31 poems à un étranger…
The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my second year and I was on List 10. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 16 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent. Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…
