Hello, Yellow!
Celebrating the colour of happiness and warmth — in bloom.
I’m on vacation and have been snapping pics like I was a paparazza — Grammarly, this is the female singular to paparazzi, so stop correcting me! However, unlike celebrities, my subjects were very accommodating and unphased with close-ups.
They deserve the limelight; their delicate beauty is often overlooked as they stand gracefully, either alone or in crowds, adapting to the seasons and morphing from florets to fully-fledged flowers.
“A flower’s appeal is in its contradictions — so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect.”– Terri Guillemets
Whether strolling through a park or walking the streets, flowers are everywhere. Some are carefully grown, tethered and trained; others run wild, deadheads dangling and interspersed between buds and blooms. Even weeds can have pretty blossoms.
Scrolling through at least 300 photographs that I have taken over the last few days — yes, I’m nuts! — I noticed one common theme:
Yellow.
It’s not a colour I’m typically attracted to for clothes or decor, although I love a French country yellow/blue combo for curtains and crockery, and I own one pair of yellow pants. To me, yellow is for flowers, lemons, corn, canaries, the exterior flesh of a banana and the sun.
Of course, I could go on, but I’ll let you contemplate what other objects either are or represent the colour of happiness.
Yellow boasts a hue that can vary from subtle to bold. Color-meanings.com claims there are over 145 shades of yellow. Regardless of intensity, yellow exudes energy, vitality and warmth. It implores attention, ‘like bees to the honeypot.’
“You create your own decoration. You choose your color, you choose your mood. … If you are depressed, you put some bright yellow and suddenly you are happy.” — Philippe Starck
According to All About Gardening, over 55 popular annual and perennial blooms have a golden hue. From buttercups and dandelions to daffodils and dahlia, yellow is synonymous with gardens, nature and beauty.
In honour of the birth of In Living Color, summer, and happiness, here are some of my favourite flower photos from the last three days of blooms that are yellow.
Always a treat to have your camera on a target, and a bee happens to settle in for a munch. Serendipity.
I love the colour contrast in this sunflower shot; the deep brown from the bricks on the exterior wall versus the faded greenery supporting the blooms.
If you read my recent Weeds and Wildflowers post, the three blooms screaming out to be noticed came from this bunch of Dicots.
Yellow flowers and a blue sky? You can’t beat it.
I love how the flowers in the background of this shot are blurred but still make an impact. If I could paint, this would turn this photograph into a beautiful canvas.
I had to take a closer look at this pic: were the red dots part of the stem or unwelcome predators?
They are aphids, but they help make this a fab shot — along with the thin web stretching from the petals.
Clusters of Tansy lined the river and lake. Their tiny heads make a grand scene as they danced in the breeze.
I was impressed by how big gourd flowers are — and that they sprout from the end of the vegetable. The leaves were also impressively humungous.
According to my Seek App, this flower is a threatened native North American plant. It looks similar to daisies and dicots.
From the teeny tiny yellow dots to the orange and yellow colour combo, you can only admire these common self-seeding wildflowers.
These tiny daisies were doing their best — alongside some large thorns — to camouflage a graffitied wall. I noticed the wall first, and the aqua paint added a pleasing element to this frame.
And here is proof that weeds can also look stunning. Lotus corniculatus, or birds foot trefoil, was abundant in a field near the canal. I was on my tummy taking this shot, mindful of busy bees feasting on this yellow deliciousness.
Congratulations JoAnn Ryan! I know this will be the first of many stories from me.
All photographs were taken by the author on an iPhone 11 and cannot be reproduced without permission.
