Echoing Green
May 11, 2016
Euphorbia
“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.”
— Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Foliage of bleeding heart
Queen Anne’s lace
“the leaping greenly spirits of trees . . .”
— e e cummings
Tall trees of the Hoh Rain Forest
Our second Olympic National Park destination was the Hoh Rain Forest. This temperate rain forest gets 12 to 14 feet of rain each year, but we were lucky to be visiting on a sunny day. We began seeing moss-draped trees on the road leading into the heart of the rain forest. Instead of fifty shades of gray, we were seeing fifty shades of green.
Fisherman in the Hoh River
The road into the Hoh valley
Green, green stream
Hall of Mosses trail
Tall trees on a rare blue-sky day
Living giants
New growth on fallen log
Light through a lacey green curtain
Nurse log (fallen tree nourishing new trees)
Rings of a fallen giant
Ground cover
Noah peeking around the trunk of a giant
These ferns reminded me of sea horses
Ferns with Holga-ish effect
190-foot fallen Sitka spruce
Moss-Hung Trees
by Gertrude Gilmore, 1936
Moss-hung trees
Like the mantilla of a beautiful lady’s ghost
Bearing elusive fragrance of a faint perfume
Soft, caressing;
Shaped
Like the wings of huge, inert gray moths, —
Weird and uncertain branches veining them
Gossamer, intangible;
And reshaped
Like fairy cobwebs interlacing mesh upon mesh
With lights of foolish insects caught within them
Restive, darting
With shadows —
Like half reluctant thoughts lately modified
In a world of fantastical shapes and causes,
Mystical, fleeting.
Mossy branches of a maple tree
Moss-laden maple
The Last Day of Winter
March 19, 2013
“There’s no question winter here can take a chunk out of you. Not like the extreme cold of the upper Midwest or the round-the-clock darkness of Alaska might, but rather the opposite. Here, it’s a general lack of severity — monotonous flat gray skies and the constant drip-drip of misty rain — that erodes the spirit.”
— Dylan Tomine, Closer to the Ground: An Outdoor Family’s Year on the Water, in the Woodland and at the Table
Moss-covered tractor, Whidbey Island
Lest you think I moan too much about the winter rain and gray skies, I am submitting today’s photo as proof that reality matches my glum outlook. I saw this moss-covered tractor in a field on Whidbey Island. This is what happens if you remain immobilized for too long during winter in the Pacific Northwest! The moss takes over!
So it is with great anticipation that we greet the vernal equinox in Seattle. It arrives in Seattle tomorrow, March 20th, at 4:02 a.m. Welcome Spring!
Of course, Spring here is not without its April showers — and March, May and June showers, too. But the longer days make a huge difference. Still, as Emily Dickinson knew, Spring is an “Experiment of Green.” The tractor might just be destined to stay a “green machine.”
Rain
by Frances May
Rain
on my window
Rain
on the ground
Rain
in the sky
Rain
all around
Tree-Watching: Trees as Antidotes to Barrenness
July 6, 2012
“No matter how barren the past may have been,
‘T is enough for us now that the leaves are green.”
— James Russell Lowell
The maple’s summer canopy of green
“The first bloom of the year is over. It is now the season of growth.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1853
Yes, it is summer and it is green, especially with all the rain and cool weather we’ve been having in Seattle. I thought I’d check up on my “adopted” maple and willow trees to see if I could discover anything new. And I did notice something unusual — the newest growth, the newest leaves are emerging in reddish-orange, not green as I would have expected. I wonder why? It certainly has nothing to do with lack of moisture.
Newest leaves of this maple tree are orange-ish in color.
Even the new leaves of the willow have a yellow-orange tinge.
Green Grass Growing
June 26, 2012
Sprinklers watering the grass
Watering the grass
“The grass has so little to do,
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain.”
— Emily Dickinson
“We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing.”
— James Russell Lowell
“No one thinks of Winter when the grass is green.”
— Rudyard Kipling
I love the smell of newly mown grass. We do not water our lawn, so it does get dry and weedy in late summer. This year June rains have kept it well watered. In spite of the rain, I notice that some of our neighbors do keep their sprinklers going. I liked the line created by these sprinklers, all in a row along the sidewalk.
Seeing Green
March 17, 2012
Here is a celebration of Green for St. Patrick’s Day!
Green candy on my window sill
Green and white striped candy canes
Green buttons
Green thread
Disposable fountain pen with green ink
My favorite sweater, a gift from my friend and colleague Kathy who finds treasures like this at thrift stores.
A new batch of Green Velvet Soup with ham (see my blog post for 12/10/2011 for the recipe)
Green shamrocks on my sister's Bleek sugar & creamer
Watercolor sketch of Bleek sugar & creamer
Toothsome Leaves of Virginia Creeper
October 3, 2011
Changing colors of Virginia creeper, Parthenocissus quinquefolia
Toothed edges of these leaves are turning red
“Pattern is the crystallization of beauty.”
— Soetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty
The leaves are just starting to turn color. My eye was caught by the pattern of red edging on these hanging Virginia creeper leaves. It’s interesting how they turn color from the outside in.
Watercolor sketch of Virginia creeper
