 A late May day, walking the labyrinth at Pathways Retreat center -- I was intrigued by the repetition and variation in patterns and colors I found.     
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 For liturgical churches, purple is the color of Lent, the season we are now in, the forty days plus Sundays leading up to Easter. The word itself comes from the Old English word for spring, and is related to various Germanic languages meaning the lengthening of days. These crocus celebrate the purple and glow with the spring light.      
It's snowing again. It seems a good time to look back and contemplate some of the green moments from last year. There were those first young shoots of leaves poking up through forest floor debris, full of bright green-ness. There was the green of barely opened flowers and the greens of the frog pond at the Calendar Garden. And many moments of light-filled green leaves at full growth. The seasons turn, and before long, there will be another round of bright young ginger leaves to be found. It's good to remember, in the midst of fresh snowfall! 
I've been reading Blue Mind, a book about the ways being on or near water can reduce stress and encourage healing. Given the gray skies of a northern Indiana winter, this seemed an appropriate time to look back at the photo archive for images of blue water and blue skies, for some glimpses of healing blue. Use them as a springboard into your own memories and imaginings of times by water, or under a sunny sky. 
More patterns from the prairie plantings, mostly featuring a plant I don't remember seeing before -- 
I'm not sure whether this last one is a mind-reading act or a friendly head massage. 
As I play with this set of photos, the phrase "put on your dancing shoes" keeps going through my mind, though it's really only one photo that reminds me of dancing slippers. Still, there it is and it seems to be blocking all other title possibilities, even as I enjoy the patterns and colors, especially the way the yellows on the first two photos resonate and the more subtle interaction of the purples on the last four photos. They are all dancing in their own way. 
The play of sun and shadow on leaves becomes abstract art -- more so when the breeze is tossing the branches and the light and shadow play is ever changing. Here's more glorious green from my day at Pathways Retreat earlier this week. 
We returned from our travels to find green had arrived in Goshen while we were gone, reminding me of a short song learned from a college friend on a long trip years ago: To ope' their trunks the trees are never seen. How then do they put on their robes of green? They leaf them out. Green's not the only color in sight, as flowers begin to blossom. Along the path we've been walking near the dam, there's the light purple of wild geranium along with the new spring green leaves. And there are the maroon bells of paw paw trees, with the maroon echoed in the trillium flowers below. 
Tuesday was a typical northern Indiana, transition-into-winter day, one that could make you gloomy just looking out the window. Warm though, with a forecast for below-freezing temperatures the rest of the week, so I found time to go out with my camera. It took about half the walk, heading out from the house, to shed the writing project I had been working on. The scenery didn't help -- bare tree branches, gray skies, prairie plantings full of blackened, weedy stems. I didn't even bother pulling my camera out of my pocket. When I got to the southwest corner of campus, a couple little rusty-capped sparrows flew up from the grasses to take refuge in nearby bushes. They caught my wandering attention. I listened to them sing and started looking more closely at the weeds and grasses nearby. I found silver and gold, and evidence that the birds had been enjoying the banquet spread out before them. 
Hosta
In honor of friends currently hiking on one of the Irish walking trails, here are some of the green patterns to be found around here these days. 
Burning bush flower
Water plant
More hosta
Prickly pear
Lily-of-the-valley
And yet more hosta
At long last, some days with sunshine and warmer temperatures, so yesterday I headed down to the Calendar Garden to see what early spring looked like there. It's an in-between time, with a lot of trimming and garden clean-up happening. The new is beginning to appear, like the hyacinth just starting to poke up through red-gold sedum. But there are still plenty of remnants -- leaves and river birch bark and dried hydrangea blossoms, lit by warm sunlight, stirring memories of last year's autumnal reds, golds and browns. And, unexpectedly, a flock of goldfish brightening the pond -- and nary a frog or pollywog in sight. 
On a recent walk across campus on a gray, wet day, John looked at the gray, wet prairie plantings, and shook his head at how dreary and dead it all looked. It does rather bring to mind the Ghost of Prairie Past these days, especially when, as in the photo below, there's a flurry of snowflakes in the air. 
A closer look foretells the Ghost of Prairie Yet to Come. I wonder how many seeds are held in all those seed clusters, of so many different shapes? There is a strong theme of ghostly gray and pale beige, and yet even on a gray day, glimpses of gold can be found. 
The view from our front steps is a prosaic one most of the time -- houses, trees, telephone poles, college buildings, a busy street or traffic backed up waiting for a train. The sky is still there though, and in recent days, the transition times have been full of color. This morning it was lavender and pink, turning the whole sky rosy. As I walked over to campus to meet my sister for our morning walk, the refrain from Fiddler on the Roof kept running through my head, quite in keeping with the seasonal metaphor I've been exploring the last while. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years, One season following another, laden with happiness and tears. And with light and shadow, dark and light. And color. 
Ivy-covered walls and morning light and shadows....
Leafless ivy, wizened berries -- the seasons turn again.
Tuesday evening's sunset, looking west from our front yard -- glory in the midst of the ordinary, and hopes for a clear day to follow.
The combination of this squash and the Mexican bobblehead critter has been a source of delight this past week or two. I picked up the squash at the Farmers' market, intending to cook it up, and that's still the plan, but first it served as Thanksgiving day decoration, and then the little armadillo, or whatever it is, seemed to belong on top of it, gently dipping its head and bobbing its little orange ears whenever someone blows on it. And the other photos, taken in the past couple of months, seem to go with this burnt orange theme. 
November is busy with a palette of browns and grays and greens, and occasional notes of glorious crimson. I'm feeling chilly today, and so I am wrapping up in a ruddy afghan and taking comfort in some of November's crimson and scarlet moments. 
The seasons keep on turning. We're entering late fall, with most but not all of the leaves down. Branches may be bare, but the grass is still green, a few flowers are still dancing in the prairie plantings, and the red leaves on the viburnum and Japanese maple are still hanging on. Plenty of plants have turned brown, though, setting seed or going dormant. On a gray November day it can get depressing, even though those seeds are a promise that spring will come again and many plants need that dormancy period, their sabbath rest. And when I walk past the prairie plantings in the early morning, or at dusk, a frolic of finches darts about, delighting in the feast of seeds spread out before them. They are a soft, warm brown, having set aside their golden summer coats for their traditional winter garb. Earth too is gradually shedding her vibrant summer dress, snuggling into the browns and grays of late fall, getting ready for winter. And on days like today, the sun and clouds take turns, highlighting the intriguing patterns of dried seedheads. 
I love the earthy colors of fall -- though I'm not sure why brown and bronze and moss green should be seen as more earthy than the deep blue of delphiniums or pink cone flowers or blazing gold sunflowers. Here are a few random leaf and mushroom compositions, as provided by Mother Earth -- recorded at Pathways Retreat Center on a gray day earlier this week. 
Color, light and shadow, repeated shapes -- what catches our eye? What gives us a spark of delight, a brief glimpse of beauty? Here are a few more from our time in Edmonton. 
More zinnia zanniness. Even when battered and beetle-bedecked, they are still celebrating with stars and an explosion of color. 
It was a lovely afternoon for a trip to the Defries Calendar Garden just south of Goshen. Early September is apparently the time for purples, yellows, and greens, catching the light. 
The combination of morning light, a heavy dew, and fall flowers makes for some glory-filled moments, thanks be to God. 
This seems to be the season for spiky purple plants in my garden -- salvia, sage, lavender, hyssop, butterfly bush. The butterflies are loving it. While the overall effect is spires of purple, when you focus in on the shapes of the individual blossoms, what a variety of shapes! 
Butterfly bush has a fanfare of trumpets with fire at their hearts -- and the underside of this swallowtail butterfly echoes the fire with its own refrain of orange and blue. 
Salvia's jester caps
Anise hyssop in sunshine and shadow
Fragrant lavender
Apparently this is not the hyssop that they suggest planting with cabbage, so as to deter Cabbage White butterflies.
When Beth and Jesse got married last year, they wanted lots of colorful summer flowers for their decorations. I planted sunflowers, and we knew there would be black-eyed susans, queen anne's lace and other roadside flowers. Several friends allowed us to sow seeds in their gardens in various locations around town, which we figured increased our chances that some would be in bloom when we needed them. Our plans worked well, and there were bucket-loads of colorful flowers to put in pint jars for table decorations. This included lots of bright zinnias. I had never been very interested in zinnias. They always seemed stiff and rather boring, and I generally have preferred perennials to annuals. But last summer I realized zinnias did a good job of bringing color to the late summer garden, and this year I planted zinnia seeds. And I've discovered that zinnias are not only full of color -- if you take a close look, they are downright zany. 
I found a magnificent stand of pokeweed in a corner near the old barn at Maple Tree Meadows. Pokeweed, as its name makes no attempt to hide, is a weed. The plant itself can grow up to nine feet tall, and produces lots of berries. This one had pendants at all stages from flower to berry, making for an intriguing continuum from pastels to rich, dark colors. They look luscious, but pokeweed berries are poisonous, though I've read that the early spring shoots are edible. 
During the Soul and Soil retreat on Thursday, I spent the contemplative prayer time roaming with my camera. The last ten or fifteen minutes of that I slowly circled Karla's herb bed, focusing in on some of the intriguing shapes and patterns. Until I slowed down and looked, and looked again, none of them had made even a tiny "blip" on my consciousness, even though we had gone past the bed several times. Later, as we gathered around the dining table for lunch, one of the other retreatants told me she had discovered a new contemplative practice. She had ended her prayer time sitting quietly on the porch, sheltered from the light rain, looking out over the yard and the herb bed, and watching me contemplate the plants with the help of the camera. She discovered that it can also be contemplative to watch someone else in the midst of going slowly, looking, trying other angles, looking again. 
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My approach to contemplative photography --
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver in "Sometimes" Categories
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