Red Poppies and Pink Peonies

Jello Mold Farm

While I was up in the Skagit Valley, I stopped by Jello Mold Farm to wander around the flower beds.  On this early June visit, I was especially taken with the red poppies and the pink peonies.

Garden shed with pink peonies, Jello Mold Farm

Bells of Ireland

Cerinthe

Moon Snail Project # 89 – 92: Background Colors

“Color is a power which directly influences the soul.”
— Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Moon snail shell on red

“White Shell with Red” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1938

“Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.”
— Paul Klee

The paintings for this post were my attempts to play with color.  O’Keeffe’s “White Shell with Red” is an inspiration.  My amateur attempts fell far short of my aspirations for this challenge.

Moon Snail Shell # 89, watercolor sketch with red

Moon Snail Shell # 90, watercolor sketch

Moon Snail Shell # 91, watercolor sketch with blue — the best of this lot, I think

Moon Snail Shell # 92, watercolor sketch

Raspberries: The Most Innocent and Simple of Fruits

“Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits, the purest and most ethereal.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1851

Raspberries ripening on the bush

Fresh raspberries

Freshly picked raspberries

Raspberries!  One of the tastes of summer.

Colors are the Smiles of Nature

“Colors are the smiles of nature.”
— Leigh Hunt

Looking into the cup of a tulip

“Of all God’s gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.”
— John Ruskin

“Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.”
— Oscar Wilde

“Shut your eyes, wait, think of nothing. Now, open them … one sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and glory of colour. This is what a picture should give us … an abyss in which the eye is lost, a secret germination, a coloured state of grace … loose consciousness. Descend with the painter into the dim tangled roots of things, and rise again from them in colours, be steeped in the light of them.”
— Paul Cezanne

Well, you cannot help but be steeped in the light of color during tulip season.

Detail, tulip

"Yellow is capable of charming God." -- Vincent Van Gogh

Detail, tulip

Two Special Flowers at the Volunteer Park Conservatory

I stopped in the Volunteer Park Conservatory this week and enjoyed all the usual plants — cacti, orchids, lilies in the seasonal room, etc.  But my eye was caught by two special flowers that I cannot recall ever seeing before — a scarlet passion flower (passiflora miniata) and the Tiger Eye flowering maple.

Brilliant red passion flower

Tiger Eye flowering maple -- the flowers dangle like oriental lanterns

Tiger Eye flowering maple

Seeing Red

Here is a celebration of red for Valentine’s Day!

Red candy on my window sill

Red-and-white striped candy canes

Red DMC embroidery thread

Red buttons

Red spools of thread

Hand-quilted dresser scarf in Bear Paw pattern

Three red quilt blocks

Snowbound? Not Quite

Red door in snow

“Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat . . .”
— John Greenleaf Whittier, “Snowbound”

It must be a slow news day if Seattle’s weather is making the headlines around the country.  Yes, we got some snow starting early this morning — about 3 inches at my house.  No wind.  No blizzard conditions.  The snowfall will likely end this afternoon, and by Friday, it will all be washed away in winter rains.  Other parts of the state got more snow and high winds, but Seattle got just a nice blanket of white stuff.

I did go out for a walk with my camera before work today.  I’ll be posting some more snowy images in the next few days.

To Give Myself Utterly

Blazing red maple tree

Maple leaves in reds and yellows

Reflections of red trees in plate glass windows

“I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf . . .”
— Jane Hirshfield, from “Lake and Maple”

 

Toothsome Leaves of Virginia Creeper

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

 

Red, Red Rose Hips

Watercolor sketch of rose hips

Red in Autumn
by Elizabeth Gould from Festivals, Family and Food

Tipperty-toes, the smallest elf,
Sat on a mushroom by himself,
Playing a little tinkling tune
Under the big round harvest moon;
And this is the song that Tipperty made
To sing to the little tune he played.

“Red are the hips, red are the haws,
Red and gold are the leaves that fall,
Red are the poppies in the corn,
Red berries on the rowan tall;
Red is the big round harvest moon,
And red are my new little dancing shoon.”