My best lesson in appreciating the power of color came long ago in the isle of a crowded hardware store. I put in an order for a quart of white semi-gloss latex at the paint counter. When asked what shade of white I wanted, I passed off the question as though the shade really was of no importance.

"It doesn't matter," I answered.

The hardware clerk thought otherwise. So he pulled out a couple color charts with a combined sampling of over 75 shades of white. Seeing all that white made the task at hand much more complicated than I had ever imagined. The differences and the similarities of all those versions of white were overwhelming. But it was an unexpected lesson in hue and variety and I learned something that day.

Which brings me to today's color of the day - green.

I can't drive the roads of Carroll County in the summer without marveling at the differences in all the variety of greens that cover the landscape. The deep, dark green in the corn seems so different, so commanding and strong as contrasted with the gentle green of the lawns and with the more moderate, easy going green of the soybeans. How remarkable that we use the same word to describe these so very different hues.

What a visual feast it becomes when all these versions of green gather and assemble before us during this sultry season of the year.

I'll leave green to the poets to romanticize in appropriate prose. And perhaps the artists can best differentiate the various colors that all congregate under the heading of green. Maybe the botanists can actually explain how the heat of the summer sun and the energy stored in those leaves and the growing that you can almost hear aloud, howsomehow it all combines into this organic palate of a landscape of every hue of green laid out before us.

Add to all that green the order imposed by the careful tending of the farmer's endless rows and then impose the wild untamed mangle of the weeds fighting for their place in the sun. Sprinkle in the raucous chorus of the insects feasting at this all-you-can-eat buffet. Finally, drench it all with dew in the morning and a foggy mist for the sun to burn off.

I marvel at Mother Nature's summer travail, a canvas of a hundred shades of green presented on a stage with heat and water and bright light the likes of which no stagehand has ever orchestrated.

It's all there for the visual taking in. We are surrounded by bounty painted in every shade of green.

Dog days

In the cool air conditioning of an office lobby, I sat waiting a good half hour for my next appointment. The sofa I claimed for my own faced a big picture window with a park on the other side.

A man and his dog played in the park.

The man threw, the dog retrieved.

And then the dog sat, expectant.

The man threw, the dog retrieved and it went on, over and over and over. Each time the dog cocked his head and waited.

Some might say this was time wasted, wasted by me, wasted by the man. For my part it was listening to a bit of the rhythm of life.

Gem

Thanks to Bob Peterson for sharing this gem of a mission statement spoken by a young boy arriving at a family outing.

"First we're going to eat, then we're going to have some fun."

Could one wish for anything better?