Sweet Flag                                                                       click to enlarge

Todays image is brought to you in part by the color green. Green is a color most closely associated with summer, that season that seems an impossible distance away. Here we are just a smidgen past the deepest darkest days of winter with the predominant colors being white, many shades of white, a full spectrum of greys, the blackest black of the longest nights and the occasional flash of color which is usually the fleshy tan of a torn Wal-Mart bag caught on the barbwire fence on the way into  town.

Now unless you are one of those many children who were dropped on their heads in the nursery by that sleepy nurse you may find this depressing. Those, the dropped ones, probably revel in all this cold and wind and discomfort. To them I say, “Excuse me, but shut the hell up about the wonders of winter, you crazy person. Don’t you know you are deranged.” I try to do this with respect of course, trying  to take into account the many different souls we have to share this existence with.

Not being one of those unfortunates I am able to get through this time of the year fairly well. I do this by visiting those green, green days of summer by spending way too much time in the summer portion of my portfolio. There I slowly go through hundreds of images of summer, leaving them up on my screen until they begin to burn themselves permanently onto the surface of my monitor. I think green thoughts as I sip a cool glass of iced Jasmine tea and remember when I took this picture, while outside the cold grey day slowly passes.

Outside it still nearly dark but you can see the faint glimmer of the new day starting. On good days the sunrise will cast its colors onto the slightly stained, off-white of last weeks snow and the world is beautiful again, if only for a few minutes. But today the wind is blowing all the color out of the morning so our color of the day outside will be grey. That would also be the color of the day yesterday and I am beginning to suspect, tomorrow. Inside however it’s another story. Inside it will be a bright sun-shiny day filled with the color green splashing its merry self all over every monitor I have on. Think Spring and perhaps it will happen.