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The Invigorating Meadow Essay

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The Invigorating Meadow

The burgeoning green of the meadow in May was gloriously lush, radiant really. I searched for enough descriptive words to distinguish the greens I saw—emerald and viridian; olive, pea and lime; verdigris and malachite. I became giddy surrounded by robust greenery. Indeed, it was a green felicity, and the trials and doldrums of winter disappeared with the exhilaration I felt watching emerging blades, vines, and shoots.

As the meadow’s growth flourished, I kept track of the succession of plants. Golden coins of flowering dandelions carpeted the new grass for a week before fluffing into white globes of seed- carrying filaments. The grasses grew taller. Buttercups and blue flag iris colored the meadow with gold …show more content…

I have a special fondness for Homer’s painting In the Mowing. In the foreground, three boys, two apparently nine or ten years old, and one just past the toddler stage, stand in the knee-deep grass and daisies of a large hay meadow. Halting in their wanderings, they look toward the distant tree-edged expanse in the background where a figure in red — mother, father, or sibling —waves to them. The light, at a low angle, burnishes the grass to brassy gold. It seems to me, the boys are abroad early, before sunrise and the start of chores, perhaps looking for nests, checking on the wild strawberry patches, or discovering the business of the inhabitants of the fields. The waving figure may be calling them to breakfast. Homer portrays a simple moment of childhood freedom and exploration. The painting touches my spirit, for a hay meadow is one of the richest and best places to meet the natural world.

On summer afternoons when the sun beats full on the meadow, I like to poke about the edges between the grass and the woods. Here, in a damp corner, I find tiny tight pink flower clusters atop plants with arrow-shaped leaves. I run my finger along the stems to feel stiff little prickles and confirm my guess that I have found the plant, called with overstatement, “tear thumb.”

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