365 Days of Adventure

Adventure 265 ~ Write A Collection Of Haiku Poems [25]

/ intrepidjane

Autumn forest fernWhen I was out walking my dog in the woods last weekend, I noticed how the whole forest seemed to be turning from green to grey-brown. The colours of Summer looked like they were being washed away, from the sky downwards.

However, as I placed my attention on the ground, keen to see how all the mushrooms were getting on, my eyes were greeted by the vibrant green of moist, healthy ferns. It looked like the ferns were spreading themselves out in preparation for the imminent Autumn cooling ~ as if they were making some kind of promise to the forest floor to keep it warm.

Since my walk, I’ve discovered that many varieties of fern are evergreen. They seem to be the unsung heroes of many gardens, woodland areas, hillsides and parks. They are very undemanding, very colourful (even when everything else is fading), and they thrive in shady and damp areas.

I’ve tried to capture the essence of the fern in today’s haiku, which you can read here. I also read it out loud on today’s video-blog.

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 264 ~ Launch A 7-Part Webinar Series On Creativity

/ intrepidjane

Get Creative Webinar SeriesIf you’ve been following my adventures for a while, you’ll know that I’ve had a few creative adventures this year. In fact, the creative impulse is growing stronger with every creative adventure I undertake!

Since starting the 365 Days Of Adventure project, I’ve written an original fairy story, composed a choral piece for 3 voices, taken up photography, written a collection of haiku poems and even penned the first 3 chapters of the most unromantic romantic novel ever written 😛 .

Through the creative process, I’ve learned more about who I am, I’ve learned how to express myself in new ways, and I’m even beginning to see myself as a really creative person. And you know what? The benefits of this whole creativity thing are just too good to keep to myself!

So, I decided to invite 7 of my creative friends to help me make a webinar series all about creativity. You can find out about the free “Get Creative!” webinar series here.

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 263 ~ Write A Collection Of Haiku Poems [24]

/ intrepidjane

red admiral butterflyThis morning I went for a walk with my dog in Portglenone Forest, near Ballymena. Sparky adores it there : I think it must smell really great 😛 (and there’s plenty of territory to be marked too!)

A lot has changed since last week. I noticed that the mushrooms have started to die away ; only the honey fungus is looking anywhere near healthy. The path is rusting with leaves, and our walk was punctuated by the sound of falling beech nuts.

In one part of the forest there is a hollow which catches the sun. In this area, it still looks and feels like Summer. Some Red Admiral butterflies were sunning themselves in the hollow this morning, and they allowed me to get really close with my camera. Even Sparky was mesmerised by them!

For me, “butterfly” brings up words like transformation, change, metamorphosis and regeneration. Butterflies make me think about Nature’s continuous, and repeating, cycles. Since my poetic adventure is all about marking the transition from Summer into Autumn, a haiku about the butterfly makes for a perfect inclusion in my collection.

You can read my haiku here, and I read it out loud in today’s video-blog too.

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 262 ~ Write A Collection Of Haiku Poems [23]

/ intrepidjane

ploughed fieldIn this part of the world, the harvest is in, and a new cycle of activity is happening in the farming community. Many farmers consider the Autumn to be the beginning of the farming year – particularly arable farmers. Right now, fields are being ploughed and re-seeded with crops like winter barley and winter wheat.

Speaking to a local farmer this morning, I was asking about how winter crops work. He told me that if they plant winter crops around this time, then they would expect to harvest them in June/July next year. If you do the maths on that, that means the crops are in the ground for around 9 months. It really didn’t take me long to smile about the significance of that number, and the words Earth Mother came straight to mind 🙂 .

So today’s haiku is entitled “Earth Mother” : it’s a poem all about what happens after the harvest. You can read it here, and I also read it out loud on today’s video-blog.

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 261 ~ Write A Collection Of Haiku Poems [22]

/ intrepidjane

larch septemberToday’s poetic adventure was inspired by the larch tree that is growing at the top of our road! In the summer, this tree was like a beautiful, elegant, youthful woman, but now her beauty seems to be fading.

It surprised me to learn that larch is one of the few conifers which sheds its needles in Autumn. This morning as I was walking my dog, I noticed how brown and bare some of the branches were becoming – and this observation prompted today’s haiku.

You can read today’s haiku here, and I read it out loud in today’s video-blog. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering exactly how big a collection of haiku poems is, it’s 30! We’re nearly there 🙂 ).

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 260 ~ Solve A Tree Mystery

/ intrepidjane

whitebeamEarlier in the Summer, I undertook a series of tree identification adventures and really enjoyed them. After those adventures, my tree radar was on high alert and I began to notice different types of trees in all sorts of places. I had a lot of fun identifying them and it felt good to know more about my natural surroundings.

One tree stumped me though. I noticed it in the summer when its blossom was white. Now it has red berries and large lobed leaves. And then a piece of the jigsaw dropped into place that would narrow down my search for its identity : I have seen this tree in parks, along streets and very occasionally in people’s gardens. Only twice have I noticed it in hedges .. so it seems that it is rare in the wild.

With my trusty tree book in hand, I visited one of the local mystery trees and I think I have solved the mystery : it’s a whitebeam!

It feels really exciting to have solved the mystery – and this adventure has reminded me how much I love working things out for myself (even thought it’s taken me months to work this one out, it’s been fun 🙂 )

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 259 ~ Write A Collection Of Haiku Poems [21]

/ intrepidjane

beech nuts and casingsFor today’s adventure, I returned to the copper beech tree! At the week-end I attempted to gather seeds from the tree for planting, but every seed failed the “float-sink” test (they all floated, and many sources say that this means that the seeds are infertile).

When I collected the seeds, the earth was covered in beech nuts and their open casings. The open casings looked like little hairy hands that had released their grip on the seeds. Looking up into the giant copper beech, many of these open hands were still on the tree. It made me think of a mother with thousands of children who was ready for Nature to take them off her hands 🙂 .

Further research suggested that not only might the float-sink test be invalid, but also that the first fall of seeds from a beech tree are often infertile. No-one is quite sure why this is, but some people think it’s a kind of decoy. The local predators go for the first fall and realise that the seeds are of no value, leaving later seed-falls to their own means.

So, it might be worth gathering some seeds now – and gathering some seeds later!

Anyway, back to the business of the day 😛 . Today’s adventure is a poetic one : I’ve written a haiku about the beech tree. You can read my poem here, and you can hear me recite it in today’s video-blog too.

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 258 ~ Create A Facebook Advert

/ intrepidjane

ribbon canva 2Today’s adventure was tough. Very tough. So tough, that I’m going to need a long lie down right after I’ve published this blog post.

I’ve never created a Facebook advert before. Once, I really pushed the boat out and “boosted” a post  (with little effect, might I add), but the territory of the Facebook advert with its snazzy new “Call-To-Action” buttons looked way out of my technological league.

Thing is, I’ve got an adventure coming up which would benefit from a little promotion : a storytelling webinar on the 25th September. So, I figured that it might be time to actually face my Facebook advert demons head-on!

My image-creation adventure helped me create an image for my advert. And then I clicked the link on Facebook entitled “Create Advert”. All good up to this point. But then it all seemed a little overwhelming ~ so many different types of advert to choose from!

I did manage to work out which would be best for my event, and I did muddle my way through. And, yes, I’ve created my very first Facebook advert (which is also my very first “dark post” ~ one that doesn’t appear on my page, just in the news feed), but it really isn’t what I’d hoped for.

Creating adverts in this way severely limits the amount of text you can use in the advert, and yet I’ve seen other adverts with comprehensive text accompanying the link. That’s what I was hoping for, but my muddling didn’t seem to arrive at that end-point.

On the upside, after I’d set my advert up, I did some more Googling and eventually found an article that explained why I hadn’t managed to create the advert I had hoped to – and it showed how to create an advert with unlimited text (you have to use Facebook’s Power Editor). On the downside, now I’ve created my advert, there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop it!

As with all my adventures, I’ve learned something. Today I faced another technological demon, and the next time I create an advert, that demon will be my ally. I’m not even trembling at the thought of “Power Editor”…. how cool is that?!

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 257 ~ A Walk Through Portglenone Forest

/ intrepidjane

Portglenone Forest, Northern IrelandFor today’s adventure, I took my dog for a walk through Portglenone Forest. I recorded my walk by taking photographs of things that caught my eye and then used the images to make a short film.

My dog didn’t like all the stopping ; he was very keen to get on. The “Sparky Effect” is evident in some of the pictures (the ones which are a little blurred are the ones where Sparky was pulling hard on the lead, and I was having a little trouble keeping still!)

I’ve kept in all of the pictures, and I’ve maintained the sequence too. This way, you get to experience the walk as I experienced it. Watching the film, I’m amazed how much there is to see in a forest at this time of year.

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT

Adventure 256 ~ Collect Beech Seeds For Planting

/ intrepidjane

beech nuts and casingsBeech nuts are now falling from the copper beech tree on our farm, so I thought it would be a good time to collect some of the seeds and plant them.

I read all about collecting and planting seeds in Tree Planting And Aftercare . I discovered that the guidelines for collecting and planting seeds is species-dependent. Luckily beech seeds seem quite straight forward : you collect them, test them for their fertility, and then you can plant them straight away (or wait for Spring).

The germination rate for beech seeds is about 60%. That’s a good rate when compared with seeds from other trees. To optimise my chances of tree-growing success, I decided that I would test the fertility of the seeds before planting. In my tree planting book, it told me that if the beech seeds float , then they are infertile* (and, therefore, not worth planting).

* After today’s adventure, I carried out some on-line research. Many people believe the “float-sink” rule to be a fallacy. So it may actually be worth planting floating seeds!

You can see how I got on in today’s video.

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT