Green and New Beginnings

Hello Friend,

I’ve been watching for you, looking forward to our visit today. How have you been?

I’m doing well. Been a little busier this week with this and that, and have been trying to get to our visit, but it didn’t work out until now. I’m so glad it did work today. Thank you for coming.

Lady Spring has been hard at work, hasn’t she, in mysterious times and places. I don’t know where she lives, but every morning I’m amazed by her handiwork. The grass is greening up, and one by one the trees are feathering out in their first delicate green leaves. I think green must be her favourite colour.

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I’m pretty sure all of my tulips have now poked through the earth, and these five will bloom any minute! Something has been munching on a couple of the littlest ones. I suspect it’s our friend Mr. Rabbit, who likes to hide in that corner over there. Apparently, he finds tulip bulbs, leaves, and buds quite delicious. But there are ways to deter him, and I may try one of the home-remedies I found here.

Now, come on in. Babe had a hankering for brown-eyed susans this week. They’re a simple almond-flavoured cookie with a dab of chocolate in the middle that makes them look like the Brown-eyed Susan flower. I think you’ll enjoy them.

Won’t you sit down? I’ll pour. Help yourself to cream and sugar if you like, and a cookie or two.

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Call me crazy, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the colour green lately. First of all, a friend painted her bathroom chartreuse, which is a yellowy green; it looks really nice. Then, at separate times, Bright and Little Munch, aged 3 and 2, told me their favourite colour is green. And then, of course, Lady Spring brings green with her wherever she goes.

For me, green has always been a colour barely on my radar – that is, when I’m choosing a colour for something like clothing, linens, soft furnishings, or paint. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I rely on green.

When we take our winter vacations, leaving our land of snow and cold, the biggest balm to my soul is seeing green grass, green plants, forests of varying shades of green. It’s like my soul feeds on green. It brings new life, new beginning.

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“Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.”

John Muir

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We are entering a season of new beginnings. Now that some restrictions are lifting, I sense a jumble of emotions out there.

Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages into the unknown.

John O’Donohue

Some people are eager to get out there, jump back into “normal” life, whatever normal is. And was there ever such a thing? Probably since this virus hit, we’ve been looking back on how things were, pre-Covid, and calling that normal. Maybe what we really mean is that we’re looking forward to getting back to old routines. Yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that we will never get back to those routines exactly the way they were. Does that make you sad? Sometimes it makes me sad. But then I’m reminded that life is constantly changing …

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“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”

Rumi

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Other people are concerned about where this new beginning is going to take us. Will it really be a better place? Or will it look much like where we are right now; what some experts are calling the “second wave,” bringing with it more isolation, more distancing, more masked smiles?

I confess to being in this latter group. Not fearful, just wary. I know too many people who are considered high risk. And it only takes one stranger, not following protocol, to start the regression. It’s all so uncertain.

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“As milestones go, this is more akin to taking a breather after a long climb, only to realize there remains much uneven, steep terrain ahead to reach the top, which is still shrouded in clouds.”

Keith Gerein

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Where do you find yourself on this spectrum? Excited to get out there, get things moving again? Hesitant to step out into the new normal? Or somewhere in-between? Wherever you are, I think it’s important to remember that we rely on new beginnings, like we need green, to bring life back and feed our souls.

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So, just take it one step at a time. One you-sized step. It doesn’t matter what size steps your friend or neighbour is taking. Stay tuned to what works for you. And, little by little, we’ll figure this out. We’ll figure out how to emerge into this strangely altered world.

Thank you for visiting today. Take care out there, and see you next time.

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P.S. Just for fun, I took Green, as a topic and colour, to my beloved bookshelves, and chose some of my favourite reads. Here they are …

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Featured image of daffodils with green and cream teacup by Jill Wellington from Pixabay