Some days arrive with a color scheme. You wake up and there it is. It starts with a pale pink and creamy yellow carnation resting in a glass on the oak brown table and then all day long, effortlessly, you see those colors repeating, in the blouse of the women in front of you at the grocery till, in the hair and leather collar of a small dog tucked in the arm of its owner at the coffee shop. The colors bounce in and out all day long.
Recently, when my granddaughter was sleeping over, I had such a day. Too early in the morning, I scrambled down the stairs in search of coffee and there it was, magenta, golden yellow, warm green.
The edge of my granddaughter’s jacket draped over a chair reflects the morning light. Shades of dark and light magenta pink flickering as the breeze blows the branches outside, shifting the light over the fleece. Automatically I mix colors in my mind. Lacking a tube of permanent magenta, perhaps a mixture of Vermilion and Rose Madder Genuine would create the color. Is it amaranth?
The sun shines golden yellow through the white curtains, I open them and new spring green leaves are popping out on the rich, mossy branches of the apple tree.
Later we go to the beach and park on the road near a field of lambs. The meadows are the same warm green as the apple leaves, and the magenta jumps out at me again, this time in the blossoms of the salmon berry bushes in the hedgerows. Arbutus trees glow in the distance. Magenta, golden yellow, warm green.
Then a meander down the path to the beach below scattered with pale yellow logs. A long corridor of rosy, plum pink seaweed left by the waves the night before astonishes us. It glimmers in the cloudless sky and snakes along the full length of the shore as far as we can see.
Upon closer inspection, I spot deep gold and green seaweeds entwined amongst the pinks, mirroring the girl leaping along the logs, her hair golden in the sun.
Eventually the weather changes, the air cools, rain spatters down and the warm, juicy, colours fade. We squeeze into a small log fort and hunker down to play a game of Xs and Os in the sand.