Colors, Endless Colors

Posted on October 11, 2014 by composerinthegarden

Autumn in leaves of gold,
springtime a thousand shades of green unfold to
summer with its joyous Joseph’s Coat of colors,
endless colors, endless colors.
~from the song “Winter” by Lynn Emberg Purse ©2009

Autumn has decidedly arrived. Wild windy storms brought rain, hail, mist and fog this past week; the green trees have begun to don their fall coats while their leaves are drifting into the garden paths and beds. The cool damp weather has intensified the colors of the garden and triggered new blossoms from many of the plants. A fuchsia rose here, a peach salvia there – scent and color hang heavy in the air. Yesterday morning, a thick fog turned pearly with the morning light and the world was wrapped in a glowing cloud. Slightly disheveled at the end of the growing season, the garden was nevertheless graced for a moment with endless colors. (Click on any photo in the montage to see a bigger image; All photos ©2014 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved)

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like silence, listening to silence. ~Thomas Hood, English poet

Dreaming of Oz

Posted on January 5, 2013 by composerinthegarden

Dorothy singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

I was eighteen years old before I realized that the classic 1939 Wizard of Oz movie was not filmed entirely in black and white. I had watched it every year of my childhood on our sturdy black and white television, enchanted every time by the magic of the Land of Oz and Dorothy’s adventures there. When I returned home for Easter vacation from my first year at college, I settled in front of our new luxury item, a color television, to watch my favorite movie. Of course, the movie starts in sepia tone, close enough to black and white for me not to notice the difference, and I dreamed along with Dorothy as she sang of a land “somewhere over the rainbow.” Imagine my shock and surprise that matched her own when she opens the door of her wind blown house and stands breathless before the colorful landscape of a new world.

Dorothy looking into Oz

Like Dorothy, I feel as if I am standing on the threshold of a new landscape, though I must pass through the long storms of winter before I can step into it. The Christmas decorations are put away and the house has lost its festive air. The romance and beauty of fresh snow fall has degenerated into rough trampled paths through the woods punctuated by dark bare trees and a leaden gray sky. It is the black and white and sepia tone world of every day life. But the seeds to this year’s garden have arrived and I feel very much like Dorothy, standing in her monotone world while peering into the vibrantly colored Land of Oz.

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It may be a long passage of winter months before I can cross that threshold into the rainbow land of my garden, but the seeds I hold in my hand become a magic carpet in my imagination that will eventually carry me there.

Video clip of Dorothy opening the door to Oz

Video clip of Dorothy singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

Related posts:
Planting a Seed
The Space Between

The Subtle Season

Posted on November 10, 2012 by composerinthegarden

Subtle and dark, lovely and stark, in gentle tones of gray and brown and white, for a night and a day, then all turns gray . . . from the song “Winter” by Lynn Emberg Purse

In the study of the physics of sound, I have always found it interesting that humans don’t perceive many different subtleties of volume but an almost infinitesimal perception of the subtleties in pitch (frequency) and tone color (timbre.)

And so it is in the garden. It is that “in between” season, after the loud fireworks of autumn and before the stark black and white of winter. The garden is quiet these days, with mostly the wind and the occasional bird call for a soundtrack as I wander through. But with the closest attention, there is subtle beauty that will linger until the snows come.

Misty Woodlands

Dewy Grass

Dewy oak leaf

Inflorescence

Leaf and Hydrangea

Mossy rock with leaf

Seedhead

Cluster of seedheads

Hydrangea aborescens

Fallen branch with leaves

Shadow and Light

Posted on October 26, 2012 by composerinthegarden

Chiaroscuro – Italian for the play of shadow and light, most often referring to tonal relationships in visual art (Wikipedia)

Walking through a garden or a forest is a much different experience than looking at it from afar. When seen from a vantage point, no matter how beautiful a view, only your eyes see the beauty before you and you are separated from it – it and you. But walking in it and through it, that is a different experience altogether. You and it become a “we” – fused together by a play of shadow and light, transient shifts of color and tone that enfold you as a part of nature’s spectral ballet.

Chiaroscuro is a term that painters used to describe the use of shadow and light to create the illusion of three dimensionality on a two dimensional plane. Photographers embraced it as a reminder that they were photographing light, not things. As I walked through the garden this week, each step became an experience of shadow and light. Every plant and flower took on a golden glow, filtered through the autumn leaves above. Standing below a fiery maple tree became a transcendent experience of standing in liquid gold; the deep umber and burgundy hues of light traveling through oak leaves captivated me for long moments. The beauty of autumn is transitory, all the more treasured for that short period of time when we look upward at a canopy of color that is unmatched in any other season.

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Here is French singer Juliette Greco singing Les Fuielles Morte (Autumn Leaves) in French in a live concert in Berlin (1967) in a simple arrangement of voice and guitar. Sartre said of her that she had “. . . millions of poems in her voice.” (Wikipedia)

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep. ~ Geothe

For a translation of the original French lyrics (by Jacques Prevert) to Les Feuilles mortes/Autumn Leaves (not the Johnny Mercer English lyrics) – see this translation by Coby Lubliner.

Second Wind

Posted on October 6, 2012 by composerinthegarden

Second wind – restored energy or strength; renewed ability to continue in an effort ~ The Free Online Dictionary

The rains came last night, the wind blew them in. When I went out at midnight with Angel, the air was still warm, pale clouds were threaded across the sky, and the insect chorus was heartily singing. I fell asleep by an open window, lulled by the unexpected sound of summer in October. But later I woke to the sound of the wind blowing the leaves and bowing the trees for hours, finally bringing a soft steady rain punctuated by acorns plunging from the trees onto the roof. It was a night to wake up often and listen, then fall asleep again with the wild sounds of the earth all around.

The garden lingers into fall, having gotten its second wind after the heat of summer. MIld days, alternating between warm slanted sunshine and entire days of rain and mist, have fostered a last round of bloom. Even as copper oak and golden ash leaves drift into the garden beds, the bright faces of flowers blossom everywhere. The purple asters and golden mums of the season have appeared right on cue, but roses, salvias and coreopsis are making a surprise grand finale appearance, along with the annual nicotiana and ageratum. The deep warm foliage of coleus and ornamental sweet potatoes have refreshed themselves after the scorching heat of August; their vibrant leaves trail and climb through the garden in a final burst of glory. Here and there a summer clematis flower pops up, an unexpected treat. The tall grasses are at their height of flowering, wands swaying in the slightest breeze, moving in tandem with the clouds overhead.

Bio-acoustician Bernie Krause coined the term geophony to describe the sounds of the rain, wind, thunder, surf – the music of the geosphere, as different from biophony, the sounds of the biosphere. Although the raucous arguments of crows and the chirping calls of chipmonks will continue year round, I can hear the shift from the biophony chorus to the predominance of the geophony orchestra. As the northern hemisphere swings into late autumn, the music of wind and weather is gradually taking the place of the creature choir that is the hallmark of spring and summer.

Here are some photos of the fall garden in its second wind. (click on any photo to enlarge it; that will take you into the gallery viewer – if you are on a mobile device, scroll up to see it)