Sudden Green

I was told by a friend the other day that the human eye can detect up to forty different greens but only twenty different reds. I don't know how true this is but I can well believe it. The Wiltshire countryside and our garden seem to have them all just now.

With the sudden green of spring around me, my post on green is organic in inspiration and mostly from my garden - with the exception of the first photograph.

This is a piece of work completed by my daughter for a school exam project in art when she was 16. It was based on a photograph she took of the greenhouse at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. One of my most treasured possessions, its colour made it seem so right for this post.

It contains blue-greens not found anywhere else at the moment, as all the vegetation is young and fresh.

In our garden, there are the  pale only-just-greens of newly furled fern leaves. So fleeting, they have a wonderful fragility about them.













Then there is the deep, dark green of the ivy on the old yew trees behind the house (darker and richer than this in reality) ...

and all of those 38 shades in between....















The surprising and sudden growth is dominating my thoughts and I haven't focused on much else. Even driving to an art group meeting this morning, I spotted this lovely simple green bench surrounded by fresh grass and daisies. How English and spring-like is that!

If you're not sure what this is all about, Julie B. Booth's threadborn blog will explain!