Colors
I'm
not a fan of the monochrome of winter.
The
winter is brown, black, gray and white. North of about latitude 30°:
months in a row. Day after short, dark day. Wind. Damp cold.
Desert dry house.
Rogers
Hornsby, the Hall of Fame baseball player, said: “People ask me
what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I
do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
OK,
I'm not quite that bad. I wander out, poke a few holes in the
ground, mix a little dirt, pull dead leaves off the bushes and
generally putter around, but it's not the same as the rest of the
year.
Winter
colors? Holiday lights are fine in December evenings, but if they
made up for the colors of our gardens we'd simply put up strings of
them and declare our labors at an end.
Colorless
can work: there is an artistic genre which specializes in black and
white photography, emphasizing the form of objects without the
distraction of color. Nice in small doses.
From
late winter through early spring the shoots of bulbs expand and
provide a daily surprise. Crocus' are the first to break the gloom
with bright oranges, yellows and purples. They're small and it's
rare to see a large area covered with them, but they confirm the
early spring.
And
then the azaleas. Lords of all they survey, coming at you with a
brilliance that transforms the world! After the brown, black, gray
and white of winter, our love affair with gardens is renewed. And
what are those bright azalea colors that say “Spring!'? Reds,
pinks, oranges, lavenders, and purples. It's too much for some
people. Adrian Higgins, garden writer for the Post, finds them
overwhelming and too much, maybe, for a delicate constitution.
Whites?
A man of my acquaintance prefers whites over any other color. Ah,
bleak winter again. Whites are good for separating two colors that
might not look good side-by-side, but you don't want too many of them
or the show weakens, hearkening back to the cold, dark times.
After
the flower show of spring, plants grow and change shape, giving you a
subtly different garden every day. You can see them straining for
dominance as you stand surrounded. Summer is a deep green ocean,
punctuated with a cicada's buzz.
More
colors pop out in the fall. A few late-flowering plants show that
they have something left in the tank and the canopy thins, revealing
the puffy clouds and blue skies of the end of the year. Changes
every day.
Everyone
has their favorite colors and arrangements. For me the colors of
winter are best shown in a supporting role, letting the unmatched
blaze of the spectrum celebrate the new garden year.
(c)2016 Barry Sperling
