Color my world

A few days ago I got startled and suckered into a supermarket checkout-stand impulse purchase. I had to have this magazine. Its glossy cover radiated color: bright blue flower planters, stuffed with pink pelargoniums, purple petunias, egg-yolk yellow marigolds, and rose-red dragon wing begonias, set against the soft-focus shimmer of chartreuse and gold in the background. (Yeah, it was the cover, but it might as well have been a centerfold.) It's as though I'd forgotten what color was, in these latter days of gray, with crusted snow banks like the insides of an overfrosted old freezer, and evergreens faded to khaki. Even dreams these days are dun-colored (and sometimes fretful and ridiculous: last night's featured an extremely large rabbit hoisting an extremely tiny rabbit up to one of the whiskey barrel planters, the better for it to gobble away at the tops while simultaneously digging out the plants by their roots). When I can't claw my way out of this total failure of imagination—how could it ever be warm again? and green again?—I turn to these memories of summer past, stowed away for this chilly day, from Hands in the Dirt, and try to start dreaming again in "green bean green".

Comments

[Kathy]

I must frequent the wrong supermarkets. Which issue of what magazine was it?

[Chan S.]

It's the Early Spring 2005 issue of "Garden Ideas & Outdoor Living", one of Better Homes and Gardens' quarterly publications. The cover is drool-worthy, but I shake my head at not having had the fortitude to just wait and go look at it in the library or something. Moral: not only never shop when you're hungry--never shop when you're caffeine-deprived and with the winter blahs.

[Don]

Chan -- I forgot about that post. It seems along time ago right now.

And yet, temps are in the 40s, and my daffodils have about a half an inch of growth that has broken through the dirt.

So perhaps color will return.

[Chan S.]

There usually aren't any signs of life in my garden until about Tax Day, but lucky you!--to have daffodils poking out on Groundhog Day.

[Tatyana]

I ran downstairs and into the backyard after reading your post - and my brave soldiers were poking thru, too! Beneath snow piles after the recent blizzard, tiny spears of daffodils.
Today the snow almost all gone, the result of the sudden warm spell, and I saw the cyclamen leaves, so pretty among the wasted foliage mulch.

I can't stand the thought this is the last spring I enjoy this garden; the house will be on the market soon and who knows what will the new owner do with it. One of our neighbours cut out beautiful old gortenzias and pour concrete over whole yard...

[Chan S.]

Daffodils! Cyclamen! Enjoy your spring, and I hope the new owners of your home will be good stewards of your garden. I don't blink an eye at the thought of moving on from my house (although I've very fond of it) to another one, but I shudder at the thought of ever leaving my garden.

[Tatyana]

Thank you for the good wishes, Chan.
I have been having your blog on so many cross-references: garden, books, music - even across Atlantic.
Thanks for providing a quiet contemplative space among the noise of blogosphere.