This is the ninth week of Haiku Year 24, my project to document the 24th year of my life through daily poetry and photography…
From May 10th to August 7th, I was intern for the Farm at Olney Friends School, a Quaker boarding school for 9th-12th graders in Barnesville, Ohio. I had an excellent experience helping to grow organic food for the school’s kitchens, working with and around exceptional people. I’m thankful to the school for welcoming me into the Olney family and taking such good care of me this summer. I left on the morning of August 8th, and virtually every photo in this project to that date had been in or around the school’s campus and farm.
Check them out, especially if you’re a parent with children of high school age. Here are links to their website, their Facebook page, and their Twitter account where you can find out more.
So I went to my cousin’s wedding last weekend and I wasn’t spending the time to do this project while I was there, so I’m currently working through the largest backlog of haiku yet experienced in this project.
I’m not always satisfied with the photographs I take, but I think it is more important that they be taken on the day of the haiku than that they be really great pictures. I’m starting classes again in about a week, which I imagine will make this project more difficult. I’ll be busy all day every day, and the challenge will be to remember to take some sort of nature photograph each 24 hour period. Meeting this challenge can be a boon to my physical and mental well-being, as my dedication to this project will obligate me to take at least some time out of every day to slow down and observe something in the natural world worth commenting on.
My typical schedule has been to write and upload the haiku to Twitter shortly before I fall asleep for the night because writing haiku about a picture I’ve taken on that day often means I don’t have a good candidate photo until closer to nighttime. Also, work and school. I will be getting home shortly before midnight on a certain number of days of the week, and it will be a struggle to make anything of quality in the time I have left for that day. I’m toying with the idea of a 1-2 day grace period for the writing of the haiku.
The Haiku:
August 7th #57/365
Simple happiness
Bright yellow in the meadow
Goldenrod cascade. 
August 8th #58/365
Bittersweet goodbye
The last morning on campus
Exit farm intern
August 9th #59/365
The wild violet
Not entirely welcome
Growing wherever.
August 10th #60/365
I seek reflection
In the shade of the dogwood
Where the bench beckons.
August 11th #61/365
Along the low path
Passing through leaves overhead
Golden evening light.
August 12th #62/365
Fish swim underneath
Cool waters on a warm day
Pond vegetation.
August 13th #63/365
Lonesome pink blossoms
Odd stragglers to Spring’s display
Seem out of focus.
Grayson's Blog 