Tulip Festival, April Rains and One More Week of National Poetry Month

Glenn and I at the Tulip Festival

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

In a month that has been almost entirely rainy, we went up the day before Easter – a day that started gloomy, but turned sunny in the late afternoon – to La Conner, Washington for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I don’t have quite as much stamina to tramp in the fields the way I used to, but it was still wonderful to see the fantastic flowers, La Conner was cool but sunny, had many bald eagle sightings. The tulip fields never fail to inspire me. This time I came home and wrote a poem after Sylvia Plath’s ‘Tulips.” Here are a few pictures of flowers, eagles, and us posing among the flowers!

Tulip fields with Mt Baker

April Rains and One More Week of Poetry Month

This shot reminds me of what I love about spring in the Seattle area, the parts I haven’t gotten out enough it because April has been almost unremittingly cold, gray, and rainy. It’s almost my birthday. This month has had a lot of medical appointments, dental appointments (why is this always the case around birthdays?) which can be both anxiety-provoking and depressing. I have to get even more blood work and another brain MRI in the next two weeks.

Glenn took this shot – thinking about possibly using it as an author photo – yay or nay?

I’ve been writing but haven’t been submitting as much, and I need to work on a book review and getting my two manuscripts-in-progress ready for another round of submissions. Submitting seems to take more mental energy than writing – or is it that writing poetry is more fun that submitting and revising, so it seems to take less energy? Anyway, I’ve found myself fairly exhausted this month, more than the usual MS “tired-after-trying-to-do-stuff” type – plus fighting off some pretty severe anemia. My usual coping mechanism for this stuff is socializing – which I haven’t been able to do enough of – and getting outside, which I also haven’t been able to do enough of. We did manage to plant another tree (after the little Pink Lady apple, a bare-root late-blooming pink cherry which I hope survives) plus we’re slowly filling our planter boxes with annuals. And the birds have been singing through the storm.

The weather report is starting to show some clearing, plus my birthday (not a big deal birthday, but still) is a few days away, and I’m going to try to do something fun that day – go to an art gallery or the Japanese Gardens. Or maybe Open Books!

I am wishing you all a great final week of April, National Poetry Month. I am wishing you all health, more poems, and more flowers.