Need Color?

anemone blanda

 

I have planted these tiny corms in all the absolute wrong places. As with most bulbs, the grower is advised to plant them in full sun, in well drained soil and to avoid boggy, heavy clay. Yeah, not in the cards (or soil as the case may be). Some years, they come up where I didn't plant them. Wherever they finally find a place to call home, it is absolutely perfect. They came up last spring under one of the dwarf conifers beside the house. I never planted anything under there ... mostly because I cant get under there... simply not enough room for me to wiggle underneath. But whatever dug them up and helped plant them somewhere else seemed to have picked a great spot. Come late spring, these lovely dancing flowers find a way to catch every passing breeze no matter how slight.

The color variety in anemone blanda is pretty straight forward. You can usually find a blueish shade, a pink, and a white. Supposedly, according to the catalogues, there is a true pink that is included in the "mixture" but having planted 400 of them, none of my orders had any. No prize in that box of Cracker Jack. 

So why post about anemone blanda now when there are more months of winter still ahead? Heck, tonight it is likely to get down to 14°F. We are now firmly in the grasp of winter! The sky has been grey for more days than I want to count. We had four hours of sunshine earlier this month. I know this because our solar panels made enough power that day that there was actually an excess (briefly) and so some of that power was sent up the power lines to the power company. With skies this grey, I am in desperate need of color.

However, my need for color is about more than the ongoing grey sky. Some of it can be blamed on my soul-sucking day job that drains both my energy and resilience. It's more than going from one fire to the next without any real meaning. All of that, combined with the malaise of our current political dumpster fire, is leading to a growing feeling of dread and anxiety. I know that most like-minded folks are feeling similar existential dread right now. Work sucks. Our political situation sucks. Life sucks.

But when I look at rich colors, my heart fills with a great breath. When full of saturated blissful color, I am able to exhale the phlegmatic residue from everything that has accumulated. If I can soak myself in these paintbox colors from the garden, I feel my soul soothed to the core. When I return my eyes to the room around me, it is familiar, but without the dread. Instead I find a different rhythm pulsing through me.