Paducah, Kentucky is more famous for its levy, with its flood wall mural and the Quilt Museum but the old town is still alive with it shops from Kirchhoff’s bakery through the Chocolate Factory not mention various antique shops to miss out on a visit is to miss a wonderful experience.
Spring seems to flirting with us. We have a couple of days of lovely warm weather, just right for short sleeves and sandals and then, the temps drop and snow falls on the mountains creating an icebox effect. What a fickle maid is spring! This is the courtyard as seen from the loggia at the front of my house. I used FotoSketcher to create a soft oil pastels effect for my monochrome photo.
This is how the cropped monochrome photo looked before the treatment:
Ciao, Bastet
lonely reflections –
contemplating a swan’s feather
an empty lake
© G.s.k. ‘16
(I also wrote a couple of variations for this same image:
spring reflections
alone the swan contemplates
[the empty lake]
© G.s.k. ‘16
lonely reflections –
contemplating a swan
in an empty lake
© G.s.k. ‘16
And Chèvrefueille gave really a lot of examples for explanation:
Okay … back to our episode of today. Today I have another nice prompt for you to create a haiga with. Today that’s bird feathers. To inspire you a bit I will give the examples by Jane Reichhold for this prompt from her modern Saijiki “A Dictionary of Haiku”.
bird feathers
in the night sound
spring rain
fading the colors
of a peacock feather
an iris blooms
joined by listening
the breath of disciples
in baby birds
© Jane Reichhold
king of the farm
spreads out his gorgeous tail –
feathers on a vase
feathers on a vase
eyes looking deep into mine –
again in love
again in love –
the first day of Spring has come
listen to the breeze
© Chèvrefeuille
harukaze ni o wo hirogetaru kujaku kana
the peacock
spreading out his tail
in the Spring breeze
© Shiki (Tr. Chèvrefeuille)
reflections
as the lake awakens
in silence – dawn
© G.s.k. ‘16
the spring lake
rising up to sit
on the bench
ripples
the lake ear listening
to us
tanka
moonlight dreaming
as crickets sing for lovers
hidden gazebo
on this balmy spring morning
creating illusions
© G.s.k. ‘16
Yesterday I went for a walk with the city of Arco … one of our stop overs was at the Arch-Duke of Austria’s historical botanical garden (for which I did a Sunday walk in 2013). This morning one of the photos reminded me of moonlight … so with a little magic of imagination and an app … my haiga was done. My next post will be this week’s Monday Haiga Event … hope to see your there!
Carpe Diem #950 dreams – this month Carpe Diem Haiku Kai will be prompting for a daily haiga for those who enjoy this type of work, a great opportunity!
Yesterday I took a bike trip to visit with a friend at her family’s “agritour” in Dro, not far from Arco. Unfortunately I got distracted and took only a couple of photographs, which is really a shame because there are many things to snap, including a delightful ginger cat named Heidi … but I plan to return soon!
CEE’S BLACK & WHITE PHOTO CHALLENGE: SEPIA TONES ONLY
My son is here visiting and he brought his lovely cat Brynn with him … so I decided to take a few photos of her and have some fun editing them 🙂 :
The shadows grow as the sun begins to set on Lake Garda, leaving only the black and white reality of winter, the sleepy town rests awaiting the spring tourists. This photo was taken on Lake Garda along the beach near Malcesine (VR), the Veneto side of the lake at about 4:30 on a January afternoon.
Through the Eye of Bastet 