Last week after the first rain, our "back forty" made its exquisite fall transformation. My kids were the first to notice. On their way down to the chicken coop to check for eggs they begin to call wildly... The grass has come up!
Great painters and newfangled printers have tried, but have not been able to come up with anything close to "new grass" green. This is an elusive green found deep inside emeralds, an irretrievable green that glistens and radiates, a green that stays with your thoughts all day and reappears as you close your eyes to sleep at night. The photos above are fine, but the Elysian glow has disappeared...it cannot be captured with a lens other than the naked and exhilarated eye.
We have also have a mixed-seed lawn on our property, one that we will give up one of these years, but for now it is used as religiously as a playing field in a county park - by our extended community of family, friends and neighborhood kids - so it remains. The lawn browned over the summer and, on this same first rain morning, returned in full green regalia. My husband commented that even if he had watered, it would not have responded and come back the way it did until that storm. This is the mysterious moment when the air whispers to the earth to hold its breath for just a moment more, now the rain is coming. Then, the great freeing of water onto the clenched soil, releasing in a pattern of drops made for the seeds and dormant life, a secret message to signal It is time.
No comments:
Post a Comment