Spring Gold

It was a bright kind of day, gorgeous. After a while long wait, the buds finally burst open, the leaves unfurling, in a hurry to catch up. The chlorophyll just flooding the leaves turning them from a pallid yellow green to a brilliant lime green – by summer these will be a deep emerald hue producing the energy for another year’s growth. Amidst last year’s dry litter, flowers push up, in this case out in the open on the edge of the wood, beautiful dandelions. A carpet of spring gold!

Not everyone would agree though. Our attitudes towards these plants have changed from one of valuing them for their nutritional and medicinal properties to one of out right enmity. As we’ve grown away from the land, we’ve lost what our forebears new about them. Worse than worthless to us, they now are an affront to our aesthetic values, a pox on our green lawns. Worse still their prolificacy and hardiness is competition our cultivated plants are not up to – garden woes. 

Sadly, they now fit the definition of a weed, viz. “a plant that is not valued where it is growing” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) – a blinkered view – ask the bees, ask the young rabbits in my back yard. 

In this age of rewilding conservation efforts, perhaps we should apply these principles at home and once and for all expunge the term from our dictionaries.

Acrylic, 16×20 on gallery canvas

Leafy Carpet

Everything about trees in particular fascinates me. The brilliant tapestry in the fall is a riot for the eyes both in the distance and close up. A mindful ramble reveals natures’ collages of silver maples underfoot. 

Maybe as we develop a more mature understanding of the actual ecology, our attitude may shift from being oblivious to what’s around us, to heightened awareness and appreciation, even awe at the miracle that we live in. Robin Wall Kimmerer in her beautiful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, talks of the blending of scientific understanding with the spiritual. I like that thought. 

Every spring the sap rises giving us the gift of maple syrup and starting another cycle of growth in the wood. It is a time of optimism and energy. Water and sugars stored over winter begins to push upward to the leaves at a pressure of 12-25 PSI – not even enough to pump up your bike tires but apparently enough to give us that sweet nectar at the taps. Summer time is a different story, the leaves breathing water into the air cause a suction from root upwards at a whopping 300 PSI – that is up to 3 times the pressure in racing bike tires! The good air we breath is thanks to this huge pump. All this, without any visible stress – almost Stoic.

There are a lot of practical reasons why trees shut all this down for winter. Probably most notable to conserve water and energy. Said another way, they perhaps need a rest and renewal. The leaves drop to become the humus and stuff for future grow. With the chlorophyl gone, they show their true colours like the spent salmon when they’ve reached their home. 

Guoache, 8×10 on 140 lb watercolour paper mounted gallery cradled board