One of my favourite songs is Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds. The basic theme of the song — other than the verses being taken from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 — is that to everything, there is a season.
And to every season there is a colour. I don’t mean the pantone colours of fashion — though those can be fun. Nor do I mean the currently trending “Are you a Deep Winter or a Soft Summer?” — though I’m sure that has helped many a person find what colours look the best on them. No. I’m talking about Mother Nature, colours that the world naturally bathes us in as we traverse through the year. (Though, there may be some man made influences in there, too.)
Let’s start at the beginning of the year when everything is fresh and new and growing. It’s Spring. It’s the latter part of March. The greys of winter still hang overhead, but closer to ground level, nature is waking up. As we traverse through the spring season, this year and all other years, those greys of winter slowly transition to bright greens. Sure, those greens are a little on the grey side because, let’s face it, winter likes to hold onto us with a firm grip for as long as it can, but colour is returning. It takes some time, but out of those grey-greens emerge colours of yellow, pink, orange, red, and violet. Daffodils are one of my favourite flowers because they are the first vibrant signal that the soil is warming up and Spring is here. Their bright green stalks and yellow petals used to adorn one corner of my grandmother’s house and there are several patches of them that grow in the woods at work. Whenever I see their leaves begin to poke through the snow and soil, I know that Spring is officially here and it’s only a matter of time before the daffodils are joined by the arrival of dandelions, tulips, roses, violets, and my favourite flower, lilacs. But let’s not forget about the trees! Yes. While the daffodils are rising out of the remnants of the winter soil, the trees are waking up, too. Deciduous trees like birch, maple, and oak are beginning to bud, and will be followed by the brilliant white and pink blossoms of apple cherry trees. Oak trees will begin to grow acorns that start life small and green, and end life round and brown, and provide food for woodland critters. The evergreens are waking up too. Yes, evergreens, as their name suggests, stay green all year (with a few rare exceptions like the endangered deciduous conifer Dawn Redwood whose leaves turn red in the autumn), but they too begin to change. Junipers and cedars begin to produce small berries that are a primary food source for animals like waxwings, bluebirds, wild turkeys, foxes, and raccoons. Pine and fir trees begin to grow pinecones that red squirrels love to toss into piles on the ground to hoard them in their food caches. Those pinecones start out soft and grey-green before hardening into the brown cones we all recognize as the year progresses.
Come June, Spring moves out and lets Summer sublet for a while. Summer’s colours? MORE GREEN! But let’s not forget the yellows of sunflowers, the whites and oranges of lilies, the pinks of peonies, and the hangers on of Spring. Occasionally stormy greys stop by for a visit in the form of thunderstorms, but the brighter hues always return along with the sunshine that provides the fuel for nature to produce the colours she does. The colours of Summer stay pretty tried and true, until eventually Autumn comes knocking with her bracing breezes and vibrant golds and browns. Summer and Autumn tend to cohabitate for a while where I live, much like Winter and Spring, until Summer relinquishes their home and lets Autumn have the place to themself. I live in Southern Ontario, and Autumn here gets pretty vibrant. As a kid, Winter was my favourite season, mainly due to the association with Christmas and getting to spend an evening with family I didn’t see very often. But, as I’ve gotten older, Autumn has taken over as my favourite season. Why? Because, to me, it’s the most vibrant of the seasons. Yes, the flowers are starting to wither and go dormant, seasonal fauna are beginning to migrate south for the winter, and the temperatures are dropping. But the trees. The trees!!! The trees are ablaze in colours of red, orange, and gold. My favourite time of Autumn is when the trees are brightly coloured yet green leaves still cling to the branches. The remaining green adds to the richness of the season in my opinion.
Eventually, the array of colour begins to fade, first to brown and then to grey and white. In Southern Ontario, around this time of year, mornings can be foggy, especially in the forested valleys near my home, until the sun rises high and warm enough to burn it off. Those are some of my favourite mornings, especially if I get to walk through the woods at work when enough fog is still in the air and the sun is filtering through it. But, I digress… For some, this combination of brown and grey can give the environment a muddy colour, and I see the validity in that point of view. For me, this muddy colour of mid to late November is merely a transitional period, a mixing palette if you will, connecting the fiery colours of Autumn with the cool colours of Winter.
And fittingly, it is during this muddy period that Autumn finishes up their timeshare and allows Winter to move in. For a few weeks, they share accommodations before Autumn officially (or calendarically anyway) departs and gives Winter free reign to do with the place as they please. And you can be sure that Winter is going to redecorate. They are going to bring in the colours of white, grey, and ice blue with some pine green accents. Those pine green accents never actually get replaced since pine trees are coniferous, and therefore, green all year round (with the exception of one or two species, like the aforementioned Dawn Redwood). And now that Winter has redecorated and fully moved in, many of us in the Northern Hemisphere begin to curl up on our couches with cups of hot chocolate and watch the movies or read the books that bring us comfort. Others venture outside and enjoy winter activities like snowmobiling and skiing, often becoming one with the snowy white environment. Others still take in their surroundings on foot or in their vehicles, enjoying the Christmas lights their neighbours have decorated their properties with. There is a series of five cul-de-sacs in a city about forty-five minutes east of where I live where every house has been professionally decorated with lights and lawn ornaments. A couple of the homeowners set up tins for monetary donations for local charities and bins for food donations for local food banks. Cars are lined up for seemingly kilometres as families take in the lights. This became a short-lived Christmas Eve tradition for my family as it was one of my great-Aunt’s favourite things about the Christmas season. So, if Christmas was held either in the city with these immaculately decorated homes or nearby it, the five of us would pile into a vehicle and go for a drive.
Where I live, Winter can be harsh. It’s a cold, snowy, icy time of year. Cleaning snow off of vehicles and scraping the ice off of the windows is annoying at best and downright impossible at worst.
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| My tools for snow clearing. (The shovel is from my father's army kit, and is older than I am but it still works!) |
However, there’s a kind of quiet that only comes when Winter brings it. It’s not an eerie quiet, but rather a peaceful one. Mother Nature’s colours are monochromatic, greyscale, but this allows us room to breathe. Fresh snow is a visual blank canvas, a clean slate if you will. It’s an opportunity to pause, recalibrate, rest. And we can do this because we know that Winter doesn’t stick around forever, and that there is always the promise of a fresh start once Spring moves in again. Many of us begin preparing for that fresh start on January 1st, with the arrival of a new year. Others wait for those daffodils to begin poking through the snow. And neither one of those times is wrong.
Every season, really, brings with it a new palette, new sights, new sounds, new colours, and a fresh opportunity for our own growth. Life is going to life, it’s always going to move forward and drag us along with it. But while it does, we can enjoy the year’s phases and look forward to the things Mother Nature gifts us. Mother Nature knows what she’s doing, and there’s a quiet comfort in that.
The next time you’re out for a walk in your neighbourhood, stop for a moment and look around. What colours do you see? How do they make you feel? Feel free to tell me in the comments below.
And until next time: Stay safe, stay well, and keep on keeping on.
Catherine
