“Stand right here,” I instruct my husband, Kevin, who has joined me at the front door. “Look at the almond tree!”
A pale green halo envelops each branch — visible even in the weak early morning light.
Green! Visible from tens of yards away.
My heart leaps with joy as this first of our food-bearing trees joins the currants and gooseberries and aronia berries in bravely unfurling infantile leaves. It won’t be long before the rest of the garden explodes in vivid reds and yellows and pinks and purples against a backdrop of glossy, ferny, feathery, fuzzy, even variegated greenery.
“You’re good with color,” my husband, Kevin often reminds me. Usually after I’ve finished painting a room and he can finally see how the hues I had selected compliment each other.
You’d think, as the professional artist, that he’d be the one blessed with internal vision. And he is — but he sees beyond what’s directly in front of him: A rich, timeless world colored by warm memories of holiday car rides to his beloved grandmother’s home nestled between Cayuga and Owasco lakes. Almost always in late fall, winter and early spring, when sepia tones dominate a rural landscape of dried grasses, leafless trees and lifeless fields.
Our own holiday journeys over the same roads and through the woods to his now 98-year-old grandmother’s house have opened my eyes to the underlying emotions that color his artistic creations. What’s depressing to the rest of us who yearn for summer’s vibrancy is to Kevin a comforting embrace of unconditional love and support.
But all those grays and browns remain utterly at odds with my own sensibilities, which are awakened by the subtle outline of green evident along long dormant branches. That quiet kiss of color will soon give way to life-generating foliage and all the dizzying array of sights and sounds and smells and textures and tastes that mean we’ve finally bid adieu to winter.
And, I’m good with that!
A pale green halo envelops each branch — visible even in the weak early morning light.
Green! Visible from tens of yards away.
My heart leaps with joy as this first of our food-bearing trees joins the currants and gooseberries and aronia berries in bravely unfurling infantile leaves. It won’t be long before the rest of the garden explodes in vivid reds and yellows and pinks and purples against a backdrop of glossy, ferny, feathery, fuzzy, even variegated greenery.
“You’re good with color,” my husband, Kevin often reminds me. Usually after I’ve finished painting a room and he can finally see how the hues I had selected compliment each other.
You’d think, as the professional artist, that he’d be the one blessed with internal vision. And he is — but he sees beyond what’s directly in front of him: A rich, timeless world colored by warm memories of holiday car rides to his beloved grandmother’s home nestled between Cayuga and Owasco lakes. Almost always in late fall, winter and early spring, when sepia tones dominate a rural landscape of dried grasses, leafless trees and lifeless fields.
Our own holiday journeys over the same roads and through the woods to his now 98-year-old grandmother’s house have opened my eyes to the underlying emotions that color his artistic creations. What’s depressing to the rest of us who yearn for summer’s vibrancy is to Kevin a comforting embrace of unconditional love and support.
But all those grays and browns remain utterly at odds with my own sensibilities, which are awakened by the subtle outline of green evident along long dormant branches. That quiet kiss of color will soon give way to life-generating foliage and all the dizzying array of sights and sounds and smells and textures and tastes that mean we’ve finally bid adieu to winter.
And, I’m good with that!
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