Happy February, Inching Towards Spring, Hoping for a Better Month, A Nice Review on Instagram (and Thoughts on Instagram for Poets)

Steller’s Jay in dim morning light

Happy February! Inching Closer to Spring…

Welcome to February, everyone, which means not only are we a week away from Valentine’s Day (and the Superbowl, if you’re into that – go Bengals!), we are inching closer to spring! Although most of my garden looks dead right now, there are some bulb shoots showing green in the ground. My cherry trees have buds on them. Blooms can’t be far away!

Most of the US got clobbered by a winter storm this week, but here we’ve just been socked in by the same cold gray rain. I felt very lucky to get this shot of a Steller’s Jay taking flight on one of our cold dark mornings, and the light was so strange the bird appears almost turquoise. I was lucky to have any days bright enough to even get pictures. Hopefully there is more sun ahead…

New Haircut

New Hair, New Month, Hopefully a Better Month?

I felt well enough, finally, to go out into the world after almost a month of being stuck at home sick, and got my hair done. I don’t know if it’s perfect, but it did make me feel better. I hadn’t had my hair done in a while because my hairdresser (triple vaxxed) had caught covid right before I got sick and we’d had to cancel about three consecutive appointments. Anyway, I’ve been feeling depressed and bedraggled, so this was a good way to start the month in a new light. We are supposed to have a week of sun in front of us, and finally – finally – Omicron cases seem to have peaked in our area (they peaked in Ohio weeks ago.)

After a string of depressing things in my writing life, including a long string of rejections and some other stuff which I can’t go into, but trust me, depressing, I am trying to look forward.

Pussy Willows – signs of spring?

So I’m looking forward to several things this month. Writing something new, maybe visiting a bookstore in person, focusing on Flare, Corona‘s cover art, edits, etc, and hopefully doing some more fun things than just lying at home in bed sick. Maybe even visit an art gallery, a botanical garden, the zoo?

Are you looking forward to anything particular in February?

A Nice Instagram Review of PR for Poets (and Thoughts on Poets and Instagram)

For those poets who aren’t on Instagram yet, or do not feel confident using it, I have to say, I was so grateful for this Instagram book review yesterday – and unlike some reviews, this generated sales – at least as well as I can measure on Amazon sales rank – right away! What a shock!

Thank you to TheBookshelfCafeNews for the shoutout and poets, go get on Instagram and let’s start talking about poetry books there. I am still getting used to the medium (sometimes I forget hashtags, and I’m still not confident in my ability to post “stories”) but think it is definitely worth being on there. There’s less of the negative vibe that can sometimes get overwhelming on Twitter, plus as many pictures of baby animals or cool art as you want to include in your feed. Yes, it’s still owned by evil overlord Facebook (or Meta) – but seems slightly less evil? Maybe this is because I only follow poets, Ina Garten, and a lot of red panda, fox, and zooborns accounts. Anyway, I encourage you all to give it a try. You can follow me there at @webbish6 – I mostly post pics of birds and flowers, the occasional selfie and poem – a lot like the blog, without all the words. Also, if you have helpful tips for others (and me) who are writers on Instagram, please leave them in the comments!