February First Flowers, Floods, Supermoons, and Superbowls, plus Poetry Grant Writing

Pink Camellia, first flowers of spring

First Flowers of the Year in February

In my yard, the first thing to bloom is usually our pink camellias, and they opened spectacularly yesterday, despite a week of hail, snow, flooding, wind, and other February nonsense. It makes me think spring might be around the corner – a cheering thought, after a terribly gloomy winter.

People all around us were flooded out of our homes – river trails and trees disappeared under water, cars were swallowed, people evacuated – we are lucky to live on top of a hill, and the river is a few miles away, but all week I’ve been watching the news every morning, flooding/road closures/power outages and coronavirus the two top stories, and then the politics, oy. So that put me in an apocalyptic mindset. Yesterday we went to the local gardening store to get a few sweet pea starts, which it might be a little early to plant, but we goofed around with the faux flower Valentine’s Day displays too, which was very cheering. I snapped a picture of what was normally a tiny creeklet across from one of our local winteries, but as you can tell, this is a tiny creeklet when it floods.

Snow Supermoon

Superbowls and Supermoons

The Seattle family during the Superbowl

We’re having the first Supermoon of 2020 – the Snow Supermoon.  Speaking of all things super, we were happy to have my brother and sister-in-law – aka our Seattle family – over for the Superbowl. It was great to visit with them and Glenn got to practice his Superbowl snack-making skills, and this year we had a sprinkling of snow, but nothing like last year’s blizzard.

Poetry Grant Writing – A Chore That Doesn’t Seem to Get Easier

Every two years I go through the grueling ritual of applying for the NEA grant. I don’t know that these kinds of applications get easier – well, they don’t for me – but they seem like a necessary ritual when poetry, teaching, and freelancing don’t add up to enough to really pay the bills. I looked at the last application and didn’t like my last poetry sample at all. I feel more confident about this one, but who knows what the NEA readers will like? It’s always a gamble and a mystery. There are a couple of state grants in Washington for writers but they’re much smaller so it seems worth it to take the time on this, even though I’ve been sending for years only to be rejected.

It takes focus to finish this kind of thing – at least as much effort as, say, doing your taxes – so I’m trying to get it in so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I think about what I could do with this grant – make my house a little more handicapped-accessible, or pay off some of my student loans – not glamorous goals, but they certainly would improve my quality of life. So cross your fingers for me – and if you’re going through the same motions right now, good luck to you! And if anyone has any tips they’d like to share (ahem, previous NEA grant winners) I’m sure I and all the readers would appreciate it!