Awakening Spring

'Fields of Gold' by Allard One

I just planted some purple vinca ground cover around my new Purple Ghost Japanese Maple. The tree is only two years old and very tiny still.  I buried the ashes from my last Golden Retriever, Buffy, at the bottom of the tree hole and sat down for a moment remembering her.  

I also thought about the rope swing hanging from my 75-year-old maple.  I love to swing and do so whenever I have the chance.  I repeated to myself the poem I learned as a child; ‘The Swing’ from Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’.  I read those poems to my children and grandchildren.  Since April is Poetry Month, I want to share this poem with you.

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

River and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!

Beats of a Different Drum

Pink Martini is an orchestra that has appeared several times in Omaha and their focus is jazz, pop, classical, and world music.  They started in the 90s in San Francisco and have made an international name for themselves.  They started playing together because they wanted fun and interesting music to play at fundraisers.  Since Arts for All is a non-profit and we do fundraisers too, I thought it was appropriate.  Here is their song, 'Hang On, Little Tomato'.  Check them out! 

Here’s a poem that goes along with this season as well as Poetry Month.  It is called ‘The Spring Wind’ and can be found with other seasonal poems in the poetry book ‘Changes’ by Charlotte Zolotow.

The summer wind

Is soft and sweet

The winter wind is strong

The autumn wind is mischievous

And sweeps the leaves along.

The wind I love the best

Comes gently after rain

Smelling of spring and growing things

Brushing the world with feathery wings

While everything glistens, and everything sings

In the spring wind

After the rain.

Now here's some "eye candy" for you.  I’m curious if you would consider this art.  There is a woman named Kristen Cummings who uses Jelly Belly’s Jelly Beans as the ‘paint’ for her art.  She uses many different shades to create depth and realism, much like working with mosaics.  She has sold her sweet works for thousands and has many of them displayed at the Jelly Belly corporate gallery.  It takes her a week to turn 12,000 jelly beans into a work of art!  There are 50 different flavors of jelly beans, so that’s how many colors she can work with.  In this interview with CBS, Cummings says ‘I like making things out of weird stuff’.

Come to Your Senses

The colors of Spring are subtle at first…fresh greens poking out of the ground and budding from trees.  Then the whites, pinks, reds, purples, and yellows of the flowering trees and springtime blooms begin to greet the warming weather.  In my yard, I sit close to an early flowering lilac, red and yellow tulips, and a crab apple tree now in bloom.  I love color and I can’t imagine a world without it.  However, my eyes are getting worse every day.  Because of birth defects with my eyes, glaucoma, cancer medicines, and age…my eyes don’t see as clearly as they once did.  Losing my sight would be worse than cancer, for me, because I love the world I see.  For these reasons, we will be focusing on color this month…as well as circles. 

Try making a color wheel.  Colormatters has some useful information on color theory, you may want to check out their site.  Start with the primary colors:  red, yellow, and blue.  Then add the secondary colors and follow that with the tertiary colors.  These colors, and so many more, impact our lives in ways we don’t often think about.  They can change your mood and energy, give you a sense of peace or joy…even the lighting in a room or shadows over colors can have subtle effects on our emotions.  Think about how you decorate your home, yard, and environment.  Does it feel good to you, fight you, displease you, or calm you?  Are there color combinations you gravitate toward?  I like warm colors, perhaps because they seem to energize me.  I am a passionate person and the warm colors suit me well.

Following along with the color wheel, the shape for the month is the circle.  Circles are never-ending, enclosing and inclusive, and all can see each other when in a circle.  Notice the circles around you this month. How do you feel about circles?  Where do you see them?  The photo at the bottom of this page is of a building in China that is in the shape of a circle and was inspired by I Ching coins.

Movement of the Muse

Last month, we called on our inner muse to find new avenues to create solutions.  If you tried the nine dot puzzle, what kind of solutions came to mind?  Did you allow yourself to step out of the box and see a different path?  My favorite solution is to cut out 3 rows of dots and put them side-by-side in a straight line…then draw the line right through all nine of them.  Here’s a link about this puzzle which is meant to expand our pathways and inspire us to ‘think outside the box’. 

Now that we’ve opened up more pathways for our muse to spread more seeds of creativity, things can start to blossom.  Color is bursting out everywhere and the springtime of creative expression begins.  Go back to the color wheel.  Start with your favorite color.  Look for and think about all of the things in your environment that are that color.  I chose yellow and Felina Kavi, who helps edit this blog, chose the color opposite mine on the color wheel:  purple.  Do you wear your favorite color often?  Does it make you feel a certain way while wearing it, or when you see it on others or in your environment?  What does the color opposite your favorite color on the color wheel make you feel like? 

Try this for the coming weeks:  choose a ‘color of the day’ for a few weeks.  Wear something that is that color, but also notice how many times you recognize it wherever you go.  Allow colors to guide you along a pathway each day that brings a new awareness to your mind.  Suddenly choices become clearer as the color seems to pop up in unexpected ways to answer whatever questions may arise. 

Now take those paints, colored pencils, or whatever you used to make your own color wheel and get a blank canvas/piece of white paper.  White can represent an absence of color, but you can also look at the potential of the void that is there.  Now let’s put some music to it.  While listening to this song, ‘How the Garden Grows’ by Michael Franks, allow the colors to be informed and guided by the music.  Do away with the thought that often comes when faced with a fresh start, ‘What should I do?’  Allow the muse to travel along with the song through your ears, into your mind, and through your fingers.  See what you come up with. 

“You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use it, the more you have.” -Maya Angelou

 

Guangzhou Circle in China