Tag: color

what bird did you see

My dear sister-in-law, Fran, and I attended a Dar Williams concert on Tuesday, February 10, at the A. J. Fletcher Opera Theater, in Raleigh, with Seth Glier opening. We had such a great time listening to her wonderful story-telling melodies. The little anecdotes she shared between songs were very amusing and heartwarming.

The words to one tune in particular, from her new Hummingbird Highway album, resonated with me deeply, especially at this time in my life:

In the parking lot the dark becomes two panes of light
There’s a charcoal slash of ocean and a smoky plank of sky
Now they’re changing colors
Laurel green with alabaster,
Agate blue with snowy aster.
And as the blues are brightening and the cars are coming in,
You see a seagull weave a path upon the wind,
Like a thread that can begin and then begin
While the world just goes about its day
As the ground beneath you falls away
In this time when there’s no time, there is no place to be,
What bird did you see?

You think a goldfinch is enchanting and you know you told her,
Now a goldfinch lands above you like it’s on your shoulder,
Yesterday you saw a red-tailed hawk
Around a corner proud and still
Out of place, a sentinel.
And at the window when sparrows flew away,
A single cardinal seemed to know he had to stay,
He had to be the bright vermillion in the gray,
While the world just goes about its day
As the ground beneath you falls away
In the presence of this absence, was there one bright flash, a simple song, a revery
What bird did you see?

And You will feel the summer sun and autumn rays,
You will return to busy friends and busy days but now,
In this time between the here and the hereafter there’s a feather at your door,
Love will find its way,    
In the very life you have today,
You’ll go back to what you understand,
Maybe unbelieve
But tell me now, what bird did you see?
It’s okay to know it’s me.

~ Dar Williams
♫ (What Bird Did You See) ♫

a special brassy golden color

image credit: Angie Bordeaux at pixabay

No doubt about it, it is summer now. The field daisies have been in bloom since mid-June, and now come the black-eyed Susans, whose color smacks you in the eye. I find in Gray’s Manual of Botany that color is given simply as orange-yellow. To me it is a special brassy golden color, full of sunlight, a color that no artist I can remember except Van Gogh ever used.
~ Hal Borland
(Hal Borland’s Book of Days)

mostly dull colors

10.23.20 ~ Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center
Mystic, Connecticut

It’s been a challenge finding red leaves this autumn, while dull yellows are everywhere. Looks like our nights haven’t been chilly enough to encourage a brighter display this year. Perhaps the drought is a factor, too. But I continue the search. On Friday we walked on the Denison Farm Trail at the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center.

amber

To get a really good, colorful display, you want to have chilly nights alongside sunny days. The sun helps stimulate the leaves to produce sugars, according to the National Wildlife Foundation. Then the cold nights close off the veins that allow the sugars to escape back into the tree. It’s these trapped sugars that eventually show off the brilliant reds and violets; if this process falters, you get more dull-looking browns and yellows.
~ Scott Sistek
(KOMO News, October 17, 2020)

nature’s art on a boulder

Our drought continues, but was lowered from extreme to severe. We’ve been getting a little rain here and there, and next week more is expected. It was a very cloudy day.

lemon chiffon

I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together.
~ Charlotte Brontë
(Jane Eyre)

eastern white pine cone
beautiful erratic covered with moss, lichens, fallen leaves and vines
dull can be very pretty
turning crimson?

I have tried to delay the frosts, I have coaxed the fading flowers, I thought I could detain a few of the crimson leaves until you had smiled upon them; but their companions call them, and they cannot stay away.
~ Emily Dickinson
(Letter to William Austin Dickinson, Autumn, 1851)

Tim spotted a glacial erratic off the trail
and another one
this glacial erratic juts out into the parking lot

On the way home I finally spotted some red in Old Mystic. It wasn’t in the woods and it had wires going through it, but I took what I could get. 🙂

scarlet!

Looks like we’re hunkering down for winter and the growing surge in the pandemic. I hope our bubble holds. Statistics:

New London County now has 3,456 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Of those, 23 people are in the hospital and 136 have lost their lives. That’s 1,497 new cases since September 30 when I last reported.

Our contact tracers continue to report that they have observed many instances of family and social gathering connections. We are also seeing a significant number of cases associated with sporting events. Cases associated with institutions (schools, long-term care facilities, etc.) remain relatively low.
~ Ledge Light Health District website

Groton is now a “red alert town.” We are advised to cancel gatherings and events with non-family members. (We’ve been doing this all along, but our neighbors haven’t.) The Parks & Recreation Department has suspended all programming.

Connecticut’s positive test rate is 2.9%.

light and color

5.24.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
sidewalk garden ~ 5.24.14
Stonington Borough, Connecticut

We live in a world of color. All nature is color: white, black, and grey do not exist except in theory; they are never seen by the eye – they could only exist in a world that was colorless. Such a universe is beyond imagination: a world without color would be a world without light, for light and color are inseparable.
~ Edwin Ambrose Webster
(E. Ambrose Webster: Early Modernist Painter)

faerie for colorful autumn foliage

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
Autumnal Fortress created by Kristen Thornton
10.12.12 ~ Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut

Faellan is the faerie for colorful autumn foliage. His name comes from Old English and means an abundance of leaves, aka the fall! The many colors and textures of the leaves inspire the painters in so many ways. As the leaves turn from green to gold, they capture the creative imaginations at several stages. Whether held aloft in the tree top, dancing fancifully through the autumn air, or carpeting the ground below, Faellan’s leaves are the season’s showstoppers.
~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Blind folk see the fairies,
Oh, better far than we,
Who miss the shining of their wings
Because our eyes are filled with things
We do not wish to see.
They need not seek enchantment
From solemn, printed books,
For all about them as they go
The fairies flutter to and fro
With smiling, friendly looks.
~ Rose Fyleman
(White Magic)

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Deaf folk hear the fairies
However soft their song;
‘Tis we who lose the honey sound
Amid the clamor all around
That beats the whole day long.
But they with gentle faces
Sit quietly apart;
What room have they for sorrowing
While fairy minstrels sit and sing
Close to their listening heart?
~ Rose Fyleman
(White Magic)

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

The fairies have never a penny to spend,
They haven’t a thing put by,
But theirs is the dower of bird and of flower
And theirs are the earth and the sky.
 And though you should live in a palace of gold
Or sleep in a dried-up ditch,
You could never be as poor as the fairies are,
 And never as rich.
~ Rose Fyleman
(Fairies & Chimneys)

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut