A Farmer’s Creative Sabbatical (5)
Kermit Lied. It’s Easy Being Green
In fact, I’ll bet you’re green with envy right now
My art teacher, Jan Hart, originally from Seattle, once told me that she had to escape the Pacific Northwest because she was “sick of painting green.” So she moved to New Mexico, which is mostly anything but green. Now, she makes her home here in Costa Rica, in a small mountain village near San Isidro de El General in the central valley—where, um, everything is, yep, green.
And reds. And yellows, and purples, and reflecting every other wavelength of light imaginable.
And the shapes!
The shape of the pipe vine above led me to suspect it may be carnivorous, and it is, but it’s also very crafty, considering it’s a plant with no brain. For more on this fascinating family, this video is certain to surprise and entertain you!
And of course, blue dominates every morning until the clouds pile up over the mountains in preparation for afternoon rains.
Back to being green
I was walking from my tiny womb (much smaller and cozier than an actual room) down to the river my first day in Ojochal—drunk on greenness and wanting to sleep it off in the stream-side hammock—when I couldn’t help but notice movement. Green movement.
But wait! I knew that mangrove trees can walk, but walking leaves was a new thing to me. On closer inspection, I could see that bits of greenery sliced from the canopy above were being carted off to some remote nest by a column of intrepid leaf-cutter ants. They had created a miniature highway for themselves, about 3 inches wide, stretching in both directions as far as I could follow.
Green is a happy color
Many moons ago as a child I remember watching an episode of Science Fiction Theater about a little boy, blind from birth, and a mad scientist who believed he could restore the child’s sight.
I remember the happy ending—but not the scientist’s discovery, unfortunately—where the boy, being shown items of differing hues, shouted with glee when shown something green.
“Green is a happy color!” he cried, the first color he had ever known.
And if green is the last color I ever know, I will be happy too. ❤
Author’s note: As I write this, my friend Jan Hart is in the hospital in intensive care. All we have for her now is hope for a smooth transition to a warm and humid place where tropical flowers and every shade of green will surround her forever.
Thanks for joining me on my tropical sabbatical! And thanks to ScienceDuuude and WotWU for welcoming this wilderness-wandering writer, and to Shadowgnosis for never taking pictures of me without makeup.