I have been authoring fewer posts for TYWKIWDBI in recent months, in part because surfing the internet has become so relentlessly depressing. When I need therapy, I escape to the outdoors, and with travel options more limited, I've been spending more time at the University of Wisconsin arboretum. This week instead of exploring the prairie or wildflower-rich areas, I headed to the evergreen collections.
I know there are some who feel that pines and other non-deciduous plants are not colorful enough. To them I would offer the observation of that great philosopher, Lorne Malvo, who noted that the human eye can perceive more shades of green than any other color.
Whether that is true or not is irrelevant, because to my eye the beauty of evergreens lies not in their color, but in their remarkable variety of conformations and textures. If I were entertaining a visually-impaired friend, this is the section of the arboretum that I would bring them to.
Having said that, I'll be quiet now and let you browse on your own through the following gallery:
As I left I saw these two sandhill cranes. They were dancing and bumping chests, but as I drew nearer they reverted back to feeding.
As I left I saw these two sandhill cranes. They were dancing and bumping chests, but as I drew nearer they reverted back to feeding.
I imagine the fragrance alone would make the trip worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful!
ReplyDeleteGreen has always been my favorite color ~ to heck with those who think it boring!
ReplyDeleteLovely! I am glad you have an antidote place to go, even in these limiting times. Of the blogs and feeds I visit, about 60ish, yours is the most consistently interesting. Thank you for doing what you do. Also, you totally cock-blocked those cranes.
ReplyDeleteThere's a passage I love, from Spider Robinson's /Time Pressure/, describing the coming of Spring to Nova Scotia:
ReplyDelete"Deer and rabbits and weasels and crows were somehow synthesized out of the defrosting bedrock of the Mountain and began to scamper around the landscape, which turned several hundred colours, nearly all of them called "green" in our poor grunting language."
It's kind of a shame we have so few good words for colo(u)rs.
I would argue we have quite a few good words for colors, but by in large, people just don't care to use them. Just off the top of my head, for green: mint, emerald, chartreuse, lime, sea foam,olive, army, sage. I am sure there are lots more, though maybe not several hundred. I think that unless you work with color a lot, it is just more effort then it is worth to remember to differentiate sea foam from chartreuse.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_green
Deletewe have 50 shades of green here in the springtime, when the leaves are just opening.
ReplyDeleteI-)
Next spring look for the gold -
Deletehttps://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2018/05/natures-first-green-is-gold.html
All that greenery is good for the soul. And wild birds are an added bonus.
ReplyDelete"I have been authoring fewer posts for TYWKIWDBI in recent months, in part because surfing the internet has become so relentlessly depressing."
ReplyDeleteThis might cheer you up: Africa by Toto played on a Tesla coil: https://youtu.be/fstnVzw7Vbw
Or maybe Smells Like Teen Spirit in Classical Latin: https://youtu.be/PbEKIW3pUUk
P.S. I've only been to the arboretum once. Kind of a long haul for me from Milwaukee. We have an indoor conservatory that's been closed: https://milwaukeedomes.org/
I was born in New Mexico, lived in California most of my life and never thought about the colors around me as they were mostly brown or concrete colored. I moved to Minnesota and discovered GREEN! I live in a city where there are many areas of green acreage within the city limits that are always just around the corner. Thank you Minnesota for giving me the gift of green!
ReplyDeleteTo my thinking, Lorne Malvo's observation gets it backward: rather than say that the human eye can observe more shades of green than any other color, one should say that we lump more distinguishable colors under the same label of "green" than any other label. This remark, by the way, is specific to the color-naming of a particular culture, and that's not uniform around the world. Some cultures would split greens further, and others would lump them in with other colors. I have a psychologist friend who studies this: he shows color swatches to people from various cultures & asks them to name the colors. In many cultures there's a broad category whose English equivalent could be named "grue."
ReplyDelete