COLORFUL CHOREOGRAPHY My artist’s eyes and heart love the spareness of winter. I love the peaceful stillness of a snowy blanket newly spread. I love the stretching vistas seen through the trees and understory resting naked and unadorned. I love winter’s anticipation of colors returning, especially spring’s leafy green. Ah, yes! Spring is here, colorfully bedecked in fine frockery created by our Earth’s Great Artist. But, oh! Spring is passing so very quickly, beckoning us to look with adoring gazes on every new gift before the splendor fades. Already the daffodils are |
Out of my greed for more goodness, I once wished all the blooming and greening would happen simultaneously, but Mother Nature knows best. Her way is better—this flowing, unfolding choreography makes this precious season seem less brief with one beauty leaving the stage as another, then another, makes an entrance spinning into an ever-evolving, artfully changing tapestry.
Beauty and abundant colors abound, even after some rather raucous storms. Japonica, that we call quince, hold steady in their pink and coral costumes, as scarlet tulips show off in my cottage garden beside hyacinths of royal blue. While azaleas dazzle and iris beguile us with fragrant scents, profusions of phlox pour their pleasing variations over stone walls above our sidewalks.
I especially love this, my first spring at artCentral, as I watch our neighborhood and our lovely campus emerging into life renewed—the flora and the fauna, too. Across the street there’s a low flowering almond softening the edge of our neighbor’s front porch. A few doors down a giant tulip tree’s tender, deep mauve cups thankfully were spared a late frost. Today they’re turning into sweet memories as the red buds burst into chorus and the dogwoods spread their canopies with hundreds of pale, petaled wishes floating layered against spring’s sparkling cobalt skies.
There’s so much to see, to celebrate and to love as the next door woodchuck awakes in his burrow, crawls out to dine on dandelions and romps in the sunshine like a wanna-be-bunny rejoicing with the rest. The happy goats on the hill are growing positively fat with green grass grazing, as up the road the quarter horse colts nuzzle one another and play their tale-swishing games. (Footnote: I must remember to hang the feeder for the hummingbirds arriving this week after Easter.)
While we’re daily delighting in spring’s splendid array, our beloved maples are already making preparations for their brilliant autumn splendor—the perfect summer bookend before winter stages another spare performance in this colorfully picturesque hometown we all adore.