Lying on my desk: colors. An invitation to a good time. What to explore this time?

I choose purple moving to pink.

Shall I add a few bllossoms?

Yes.

It’s okay, but something’s missing. Not quite right. Not singing.

This is MUCH more to my liking: I see the red flower hitting the same note as the darkest background color.

What do you think: is the darkest red flower dancing with the background?

Or is it hiding, well camouflaged?

When I was growing up in Vrginia, I would go on these long horseback rides with my father. He taught me to me to see plants that I wouldn’t normally find. He ponted out mistetoe, high up in the trees. Higher, then higher than that.

I learned about poison ivy in spring: it’s vines and freshly sprouted leaves are oily with what makes you itch and itch. You can see them because the come out before the leaves on the trees. After that, the full grown large leaf poison ivy plant blends in: less oily and toxic but easy to NOT see. Lurking in the shadows of undergrowth or around limbs of trees.

In turn, my mother proudly pointed out to me the cyclamen that grew way up on the ridge in the woods above our farm. You had to look for it. To expect it to blossom at a certain time. It was tiny and quietly radiant, hidden among the rocks and moss.

Only after she died did someone tell me that… she had climbed up and planted the cyclamen there. All this time, I thought we were the only place I knew that wild cyclamen grew…. So special in my mind.

I continue to think they are special: my mother’s “wild cyclamen” growing among the rocks and leaves and moss atop the mountain. Every spring a surprise. Hidden, except for a short while in spring, every year.

“I’m hiding” – Peaches

Don’t wake her up! (speaking of color… Singing!)

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