Delight Radar 7 - Its Easy (beautiful) Being Green (or Purple or Yellow or Orange or Black and White)

Rice, watermelon, plants praising, Lego, Muppets, a wonderful play, and a cuddly pup

It seems color was the thing for Friday that I’m delighting in

I opened the fridge early yesterday morning to find this delight - a container of spanish rice balanced on a watermelon

The green theme continued as I saw this plant looking like it had its arms raised in joy / welcome / praise / gratitude / happiness. I remembered the words of a Psalm (I didn’t know which one until I looked it up later) about the trees exulting. Here it is in Psalm 96:11-12 - “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy...”

You’ll notice how the green of the watermelon and then the plant gives way a bit to some purple. Purple then took over as I started to see other purple blooms but connected to golden flowers as well.

I remembered another reading - not from the Psalms but from a book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer about indigenous wisdom, science, and personal stories. There’s a whole chapter that is devoted to the connection between purple and golden plants - here’s just one bit of it:

the visual effect that so delights a human like me may be irrelevant to the flowers. The real beholder whose eye they hope to catch is a bee bent on pollination. Bees perceive many flowers differently than humans do due to their perception of additional spectra such as ultraviolet radiation. As it turns out, though, goldenrod and asters appear very similarly to bee eyes and human eyes. We both think they’re beautiful. Their striking contrast when they grow together makes them the most attractive target in the whole meadow, a beacon for bees. Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone. It’s a testable hypothesis; it’s a question of science, a question of art, and a question of beauty.¹

Then coming home to see the “Kermit lowrider” that my son made from Lego

Closing the day, having a wonderful night seeing this absolutely wonderful, hysterical play.

And even though technically this was Saturday morning, it was a delight to have this fuzzy friend all cuddled up next to me as I finished posting this...

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, Joy, and Delight,
Ed

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1. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (p. 46). Kindle Edition.