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
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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.”
Nature, there is just something about it that intrigues all of us. Whether it be the changing of the leaves during fall, the first snowy morning during winter or the birth of new life during the spring. We all have our different ways of connecting to nature and expressing those connections. In the poem Spring and All by William Carlos Williams he is expressing his thoughts and emotions about spring. While in the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost he expresses the connections one can make with a snowy winter night. During this essay comparisons and contrasts will be made between these two poems and how they express their connections with nature.
Don’t you just adore the colour? Like the buds that shot on the prisoners of the cold, grey winter. Like Cherokee Park, remember? With its straight gravelled paths, moss-greened statues, clumps of fragile Ladies Delights whispering in the corners. I spent hours on the golf course there, biting the rubber nobs of my saddle shoes into the soft dirt like tiny alligator teeth. Practising my swing and my drive and my lie, for an endless monotony of green days. Those were cloudless spring days, everything was Jake. You were happy, now look at you, so much has changed.
Jackson starts the story out depicting the day as “clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson 1). The village men were “speaking of planting and rain,
It’s the grassy greens, near the winding pebbly road I remember first. The long stalks of spinifex still line the edges, though now neatly trimmed all around. The uneven crunch-crunch-crunch of the gravel as I drive my sunny Porsche across town. Even in winter, bindies pepper the half soccer field, other foliage: a bush dotted with withered yellow berries and emerging saplings surround the patchy lawn like spectators. Smack bang in the middle, winter clawing its way in, stands a grandiose resilient oak, basking under the mild heat of the country sun, glorified as it houses two tombs. Its boughs stretch towards me invitingly and I smile…
“There were orchards, heavy leafed in their prime, and vineyards with the long green crawlers carpeting the ground between the rows. There were melon patches and grain fields. White houses stood in the greenery, roses growing over them. And the sun was gold and warm.
In “Summer”, Homer travelled to his best friend’s lake home as young adults, where they would make lasting memories, yet become the adults they were meant to be in the end. The beginning of the short story shows the childish side of Homer, “His days were spent in the adolescent pursuit of childhood pleasures: tennis, a haphazard round of golf, a variant of baseball adapted to the local geography,” (376). As Percy
The rugged sea of the lawn illuminated the brisk zephyrs dancing. I saw each individual blade of grass flickering in the summer breezes. It was simple to watch specific pieces of grass because each one boasted a unique tint of green, a quintillion shades of green. The sky was as marvelous as ever. Colors that I could never begin to imagine were spattered, splashed, and speckled on the sky as if God himself held the palate in front of the empyrean canvas. It appeared as if the luminous sunset was a minuscule example of what heaven looked like. A mellifluous range of sounds could be heard. Cicadas buzzed, birds sang, and dogs barked.
He envisions poplar trees lining a flowing creek in which he and his childhood friends dipped their feet and celebrated innocence (120). Youth and the past are romanticized, and their images paint a portrait of a gentle, unadulterated vitality.
In the yard, which was kept scrupulously neat, were flowers and plants of every description which flourishes in South Louisiana.” (Chopin,
Through the use of diction, the distinguished author, D. Brown, is able to express how the land he once knew is now an arid and desolate place of death and sadness without the buffalos. Brown writes,“Day after day the sun baked the earth drier and drier, the streams stopped running, great whirlwinds of grasshoppers were flung out of the metallic sky to consume the parched grass.” The author uses both repetition and personification in this passage to emphasize how scarcely dry the land is. The phrases “Day after day” and “drier and drier” epitomize how this awful weather has been droning on for an extensive amount of time. He also gives the grass a human quality of being parched, which provides an image that the land is dry. This use of diction
WILLIAM stood at the crest of a valley and stared down over his orchard. The trees stretched out in both directions in long, perfectly straight rows. The sun cut a path through thin, wispy tendrils of fog, and shimmered off morning dew that clung to the leaves and grass; the entire orchard glimmered. The apple trees reminded William of his former students at Beacon Academy, attentively arrayed before him, hanging on his every word. A crisp, late-October breeze swept across the valley, offering a subtle hint at the approaching winter chill. The trees were bursting with red and green apples, the branches bowing under the weight of the bounty. Men and women moved methodically between the rows, using three point ladders to reach the upper branches.
He spent most of his time in his father’s greenhouse, taking in all of the beautiful features. As he spent his time viewing his surroundings, he decided that he could use nature as an aspect of his poetry. Not only did he use nature as imagery in his poems but also an emotional outlet (Chavkin, Allan). One of Theodore’s poems, in detail, identifies events that happened as a child, especially in the greenhouse. In “Infirmity”, Theodore writes, “Deep in the greens of
Like many communities, Forest Acres is a community that has strengths and capacities that make the area unique. In terms of safety this community is working to provide a safe environment for residents. According to Forest Acres (2017), it is reported that the community had very few violent crimes with only one murder, three rapes, eleven robberies, and forty-six assault crimes. Therefore, it can be concluded the community is striving to meet the goal of keeping residents safe from violent crimes so they can live in the community without the worry of becoming a victim. Although violent crimes are limited, Forest Acres experiences more property crimes when compared to South Carolina’s average. The chances of becoming a victim of property crime in Forest Acres is 1 in 19, with South Carolina as a state being only 1 in 30. Therefore, it is assumed this is an upscale community that is vulnerable to break ins and is working to find solutions to help residents keep their belongings safe from burglaries. Also, it is reported that the crime index for Forest Acres is
The use of the word “green” further reinforces the divide between the fertile land they have arrived in (and the opportunities it will offer) and the sandy, lifeless place they have left where their Dream was impossible to fulfil. Whilst the trees grow greener in the new beginnings of
Looking across the pastures and gently rolling hills of the farm, broken up into rectangles by barbed wire fences, I see dots of black where cows graze. Farther away in another pasture two spots of chestnut makeup horses, sleeping in the bright sun. Another horse, whose gleaming copper coat spotted with brown and white shines in the light, is slowly walking around his pasture looking for the perfect place to eat. I take a deep breath of rich air and smell the earthy scent of dirt, manure, and animals. Tall, green grass gently dances in the warm breeze. Birds flit across the sky, landing in the branches of large oak trees and a white cat creeps through the fescue, searching for her afternoon snack.