Christmas Decorations

This week Word Press has challenged us to come up with photos that focus on the hue (color) that represents us. I love color. I’m happiest when my world is full of color. When I moved into the house that is my current home, all of the walls in the house were white. With the exception of the tiny bathroom, we painted every one of those walls a bright color, and it’s been a joy to live in those rooms for the past 13 years.

I would like to say that I love every single color in the world, but — well — there is one exception: orange. Now if we’re talking about the succulent fruit, I definitely want my oranges to be “orange.” But in every other instance, orange seems to grate on my soul. I feel bad about it. I feel that I’m being unfair to orange, but there it is — might as well be honest.

All of my life my favorite color has been blue — with yellow running a very close second. That’s not surprising, since blue and yellow have been scientifically proven to have the most positive effects on the human psyche (barring some weird abnormality) of all the colors of the spectrum. And their effects are even more positive when both colors are used together. As an author, I learned a long time ago that when planning book covers, including the colors of blue and yellow will automatically add significant appeal to the cover and cause a positive reaction in the viewer.

What has surprised me somewhat over the past three years, however, is that I have grown to have a strong affinity and affection for the color green. For some reason, unknown to me, green has sort of eased its way more deeply into my soul and taken up residence very near the top of my color palate. When I am in stores and I need to choose a product that offers a choice of color in the material or the packaging, I find myself reaching for green about 90% of the time these days. And last April, when I took part in the NaPoWriMo challenge, I found myself creating a poem about the color green. Go figure.

So for this week’s photo challenge, I am sharing four pictures of the color that, to my surprise, best represents me this year: GREEN.

First in line is one of the great loves of my life: Big Blue, my gorgeous Blue Spruce tree, that I planted when he was merely 5 feet tall. He’s green, of course, but each spring, when the brand new buds begin to burst forth, that special brilliant green that signals new life sends me running for my camera.

Second, is a picture of my Christmas wreath from this past Christmas. I was definitely into green; hence the brilliant green Poinsettia that decorates the green wreath.

Third on my list is a book cover. I authored a new creative writing curriculum this year, and for the cover, I chose — yep, you guessed it — a GREEN typewriter. I fell in love with this green typewriter shortly before I completed the book, and there was just no question in my mind about using it as the artwork for the cover.

~

And last, but hopefully not least, is the poem I wrote last April, in honor of the color that spoke to me so strongly back then and still does so today.