Tag Archives: flowers

Day Nine: How Hope Breaks Through

Hope by Maria L. Berg 2022

Hope

Hope is “the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best; a feeling of desire for something and confidence in the possibility of its fulfillment; a thing, situation, or event that is desired.”

For today’s images I thought of hope as a bud opening, or about to open. I explored perspective and exposure with budding flowers inside and outside.

Hopes and Dreams by Maria L. Berg 2022

Stream of Consciousness Saturday (#SoCS)

Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness is “how.” Here’s an excerpt from today’s morning pages in my journal:

How can I turn things around? How do I drum up interest; stand out from the crowd? How do I create a craving for my aesthetic–not my know how, but my snow how? How will I break through? Part the sea of noise. Float to the top of the muddy puddle. Breaking the molds leaves me seeping shapeless in all directions. A movement that could spread, but how? How can feel hopeless when there is no answer that works. How can dishearten when no solution is found. But floundering is often a way through how, for now, casting a wide net, throwing out all the hooks, until the right one bites.

Hope Springs Eternal by Maria L. Berg 2022

The Poetry Prompts

NaPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is a form prompt to write a nonet: a poem of nine lines with descending syllables.

Poem A Day

Today’s prompt is to write a breaking poem.

The Poem

Hope Breaks Eternal

Hope breaks through last night’s disappointments.
How does she find the way each dawn
through the heaps of discarded
broken dreams’ jagged shards?
Hope slips through unscarred
cool and shining
in the slant
morn light
how?

Hope breaks the mold of expectation.
How does she keep leaping caution,
springing from the darkest hours
where nightmares cloud reason?
Hope jumps unstartled
unique and new
a glimmer
of thought
how?

Yummy Summer Blackberries

Flower-a-day #10

The blackberries are so sweet right now. I love snacking on them in the late morning, and the vine treated me to this flower, promising more to come.

Nemesia: looks like a baby snapdragon to me

Flower-a-day #9

Pensitivity 101’s Three Things Challenge inspired me this morning. The three things to include in my post were: CREASE, BLEND, FRONT. I recently started doing daily inkblots again. Writing about faces in the clouds in my Nephelococcygia post the other day got me thinking about drawing faces over inkblots. However, I like the inkblots just how they are, so I couldn’t bring myself to draw on them.

This morning after I creased the page in my sketchbook, and was rubbing the paper to blend the water colors, I imagined creating bokeh pathways over the inkblots as symbols of mental pathways: paths of thought, neural pathways, etc. So I strung lights in front of the pages and had some fun results.

Pretty Potato in the Wind

The Sunday poetry prompt #348 from Poetic Bloomings is Weather or Not. This prompt feels very timely since I took my flower pictures in the wind this morning. That little purple potato flower did not want to stop dancing to pose for my camera.

Flower-a-day #8

The pages of my sketchbook with all the flowers so far.

And yesterday–the first time one of my closest friends came to this house, and during this summer of record drought and heat–it was so cold and cloudy she put on a sweatshirt that looked like two fuzzy blankets sewn together, and as she went to her car, it was raining. We had a great day, and I am seriously happy about the rain, but really, weather? She didn’t even see the mountain.

The Weather Couldn’t Cooperate

We sat bundled in
my Adirondack chairs
and stared at
the black plume
building behind
the firs.

I had imagined
dives and floats in
the summer sun,
a little brisk, but balanced
by hot tub dips
if or when needed

but the gray, thick clouds
didn’t break, and the breeze
began to bite, smelling heavy.
Like hanging weights in the nostrils, she said.
A cold wind, sharp with electrical fire
is not what I ordered for our visit,

her first visit in
these long-short fifteen years,
but the plums were ripe
and tasty as was the wine, inside
was warm, and the sweet frosting melted
as did the time.

As we said our goodbyes
we were both
delighted by the rain.

Ode to a red rose #SoCS

The Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt is “Ode.” Last week I was inspired to start my daily flower drawing practice and it made me draw every day which is amazing to me, and I love the black and whites photographs that I never would have thought to try before seeing zombie flamingos’ post last Saturday. So in a way this whole last week of posts has been an ode to Stream of Consciousness Saturday.

Ode to a lone red rose
standing bold against the gray sky
its petals say see me

Maria L. Berg

I also started the Pathways project from wRightingMyLife last week and I have found that very inspiring. I created a new barefoot bokeh filter and tried it out this morning:

A blushing yellow rose

Flower-a-day #6

Today’s flower: begonia

Flower-a-day #5 Begonia

    Space Alien Flowers

    Flower-a-day #4

    Flower-a-Day #3: Shocking Contrast Gladiolus

    I really like how the black and white photograph turned out. The drawing took longer than I would have liked. I hope my drawing speeds up with practice.

    Flowers Along the Path

    If you read my Stream of Consciousness Saturday, you’ll know that I found a couple of new, fun projects. Today, I was determined to continue my flower-a-day idea (guess I take Sundays off). I started my drawing, attempting to only use the colored pencils, not the regular pencil outline, but that did not work for this gladiolus, so I think I’ll stick with my regular pencil sketch then color in with pencils for now.

    I also made some fun progress on my Pathways project. I created two new bokeh filters and have created some fun pathways.

    I also came up with an interesting walking drum beat inspired by Sheila E.’s Masterclass, so the music section of my project has begun.