The Impermanence of Green (and Yellow…and Orange…)

Most of the photos I’ve posted that I’ve taken myself were from my cancer treatment, so for this Mother’s Day I wanted to share something unrelated to the disease and filled with natural beauty.

There’s not much time left.

It has been an unusually rainy and cool spring in my corner of the world. Whereas in recent years, by now plants are drying up on the hillsides ready to provide kindling for late summer fires, in 2019, we are still getting rain showers. In fact, we had several today.

As a result, the hills and canyons are multiple shades of green. But it’s not simply the thickness of the green that makes me crane my neck as I drive down the road — wildflowers, encouraged by the rain, are spreading across the landscape. Masses of orange nasturtiums drip down hillsides as if they were poured out from above. They are stunning against the greenery.

But I am most in love with the little yellow flowers that have transformed the canyons into an impressionist painting, where an artist practicing pointillism decided she had too much yellow on her palette and needed to get rid of it somewhere. The effect is breathtaking.

Now, this may not seem like anything remarkable to you, but I am filled with joy to see so much color and beauty in the plantlife, untended by human hands and perhaps guided by something far more divine.

Eventually, summer will take over, the rains will stop and the brown will return. These glorious colors may portend danger as the heat intensifies and the plants become fuel. So I will enjoy them now as a gift to the senses — it is not that these flowers are beautiful to me in spite of blooming only for a short time. They are beautiful because they bloom only for a short time. Happy Mother’s Day!