Sunday 23 February 2014

Green

 I have this urge to see green.  I guess it must be to do with a longing for the spring.  Not just any green but wonderful juicy apple greens and lime greens, yellow greens.  Strong clear warm greens.  Green green greeeeen!!!

And pink.  Light sweet blossom pinks.

And intense tomato reds.  And orange.

I want to see them, eat them, wear them. 

I’ve had an eBay raid (well, one has to try and effect a certain damage limitation when these urges strike!) to surround and submerge myself in green, pink, orange, tomato red.  I eat a little cherry tomato – oh my goodness, that’s SO delicious! Another!  Another!  Get some more! Peppers, apples, courgettes, celery, cavalo nero, broccoli, lettuce!  Jaffas, clementines, carrots . . .

I stand and look at the abundant moss that grows in our front garden.  Oh, look at that, look at that!  So GREEN!

I feel vividly, cheerfully (even rather wildly) alive.

This is all very well but sometimes even I find myself a little wearing.  Why am I like this?


I had the mole chopped out of my leg – ooh, when I changed the dressing I should have thought to take a pic and show you the scar with its spidery black stitches.  Wow!  It’s a good one!

This was our garden last summer.  This is what I'm ready to see.


Green!

13 comments:

Sandra Ann said...

Whether you are wearing green, blue or purple, you are FAB!!

Hope everything is OK, thinking of you xxx

Pen Wilcock said...

:0) xx Waving!

Unknown said...

Funnily enough I understand. ☺ The only thing I wanted to see after several months in England was blue sky ~ that vivid, deep, infinite, scorching blue only Australian skies produce with nary a cloud in sight. I ached for blue. I longed for blue. I was desperate for blue. Which is why I still live here.... ☺

Pen Wilcock said...

Ooh, yes! BLUE! When I was at one of the lowest points in my life, I began to ask the question, "What was I sent here to do?" And the very first answer that came to me was "Look at the blue." I had no idea what that meant (still haven't). So I just did it. For six months, I just looked at everything blue - flowers, sky, fabric, whatever. Really looked at it properly. I think it did me good. Blue is the colour of healing.
I have never seen Australian skies; our English ones look really deep and glorious and vivid to me. So I'm interested to hear that your skies have an intensity of blue ours don't have. God bless the blue to your soul! xx

Gerry Snape said...

oh what a wonderful tangle of green and garden...love it!!

Ros said...

I like blue - especially sky blue :) Right now I would really like to see blue because I am heartily sick of grey. Day after day it is grey, grey, grey...

I have never seen Australian blue, but when I came back from a two week summer exchange visit in Bavaria (aged 14), I was struck by the depth of blue in English skies and the freshness of the green in English fields compared to what I had so recently seen in Bavaria. I can understand the difference I saw in the greens because I have noticed since that the SW of England (where it rains a lot) is greener in late summer than the Midlands and SE. (It is also less colourful in Autumn). But I don't know why the sky seemed a deeper blue in England that summer. Perhaps, being drier, there was more dust in the atmosphere in Bavaria or something?

I think one of the most beautiful things about the blue of the sky is that it isn't solid. It's like you can reach right into it. Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, I have gone on whole journeys into the blue...

Pen Wilcock said...

Gerry - yes; and all the butterflies, toads and birds to go with it! I love our garden. :0)

Ros, what you say here reminds me especial to two things. One is a TV programme called Supersense that was on year ago - possibly as much as twenty years back! About the senses of the animal kingdom. One episode was on sight; and I retain from it among other things the interesting fact that ducks can see a far greater range of greens than we can: their acuity for seeing shades of green is far more nuanced.
The other thing your comment made me think of - when you spoke of the *depth* of the sky's blue - looking into it, losing yourself in it - was the work of Anish Kapoor. Do you know it? Huge installations coated with raw pigment creating astonishing depth and vibrancy of colour. There are many photos of his work on line, but none coming anywhere near doing justice to the astonishing power and richness of colour in his work.
The blue I love best is a soft gentle blue with a hint of grey in it; not pale, but subtle - not as intense as azure or sapphire; certainly not deep like royal blue (though I love cobalt blue and lapis lazuli).

Rebecca said...

A Chinese proverb: “If I keep a green bough in my heart, then the singing bird will come”

Love the "singing bird" I heard while reading this post, Pen.

Pen Wilcock said...

:0) I love that! Well said, the Chinese! xx

Anonymous said...

Me too, the Twin Cities have had 50 inches of snow this winter! Even the evergreens are white with it. The closest we can come to green is bringing some cut flowers or house plants home from the store. Minnesotans treasure their summers, but I love spring the most. Hope is in the air.
DMW

Pen Wilcock said...

Yes - one can feel it rising! xx

Paula said...

The intensity of the azure blue sky in the American West, where the climate is dry. Away from the pollution, and where the night sky is brilliant with stars and the Milky Way, that is my favorite blue in the world. I seldom see it here in Ohio.

On the other hand, the trade-off is that the American West doesn't know what green is. Too dry. As a child I wondered at gorgeous photographs of forests, wishing I could be there, but not knowing where they were (not in Oregon or California!). When I arrived in the eastern United States, I knew I was home. Clearly, the green was more important than the blue, even though I miss the sky and the stars.

Pen Wilcock said...

:0) Here in England we also know a lot about the colour of mud - but also, to compensate, the glorious green of moss. xx