Pastel Essay and Text by Claire Blatchford
When walking recently through a meadow—cloudless blue sky above, warm but not blazing sun, the trees at the edge of the field sprouting yellow-green leaves, a Bobolink pausing on a weed stalk telling me not to come too close to his nest, ripening grasses dotted through and through with wild flowers —I had the delightful experience of the earth catching me up in a moment of merriment.
Merriment – in these grim times?
Yes!
Here’s an attempt I made to catch the whirling shapes and colors of that instant.
The next day when working in the garden and feeling concerned—not at all merry—about the dry dusty soil and the many small seedlings I was putting in, I remembered Ralph Waldo Emerson’s marvelous comment, “Earth laughs in flowers.” I was reminded, in turn, of the flowers in the meadow the day before: pinks, clovers, daisies, orange and gold grass flowerings whose names I don’t know. They hadn’t seemed the least bit affected by the dryness I was brooding over. Their merriment bordered on hilarity. As though the earth simply has to erupt periodically in color, song, laughter. And what a laugh that was, in advance of the first day of summer! The kind of belly laugh that bubbles up and out so suddenly it can bring tears to your eyes!
On my knees in the garden I turned my attention from what I was trying to put in and coax forth to what was already there and felt myself open anew to earth’s flowering eruptions. Here follow some of the laughing flowers with whom I’ve been keeping company.
Hear the soft chuckle and good cheer of teeny-tiny sorrel:
To the bold, unabashed glee of the California Poppies:
Sometimes I think I hear a chortle from the lush peonies.
Then, there’s the airy hee-haw and ho-ho of various “weeds” already going to seed before I can get all my seedlings in. How dare them!
And last but not least, and not in my garden but on the open hill side, I’m drawn again and again to the sweet outright exulting of bluets.
