Purple and green

Spring this year hang on well into the summer, and, in a fitting symmetry, autumn is doing the same thing.

That translates to some really beautiful surprises in the garden, like the few handfuls of supersweet raspberries and strawberries.

And in wandering around the yard, I've discovered some gorgeous and unexpected color, especially purples and greens. Sometimes the purple is seems just a natural bleed out of the red of the summer color, as it does on the setum flowers. But look at the lamb's ear below, and it's hard to pinpoint the season: it seems almost springlike, the delicate blossoms just peeking out from the leaves like a glimpse of a petticoat.

The combination of green and purples resonates with me, maybe because it's got an interesting complexity--not all sweetness and light, but some beautiful shadow, too. I get an almost tactile feeling thinking about them---they just feel good to carry around together, don't you think?

In a nice coincidence, I've had purple and green on my mind lately. My cousin is getting married next year, and she is contemplating using all sorts of purples and green tones in her plans. What lovely ideas she has! She's started a blog called Bridalhood to document her inspirations--and it in turn inspired me.

So I grabbed my camera, and started looking more intently for purple and green--and found it everywhere this fall, in all kinds of interesting contrasts.

The lavender unfurled yet another crop of stems, too, which my husband brought in for me in sweet little vases yesterday. Smelling fresh lavender in the room in November is a little secret thrill.

The thyme flowers bloomed again, too, in tiny violet whispers on the wiry stems. I love the contrast of the glossy green leaves, the spiky stalks, and the almost orchid-shaped flowers which, individually, are tiny enough to fit onto the heads of pins.

Hydrangeas blend the purple and green so perfectly--not only in their blooms, but in their leaves.

I see these fanning out from the hydrangea stalks, and the word varigated swims into my thoughts and sticks there like a little tune.

In fact, I start noticing purple in all sorts of leaves in our yard:

These mates of our pachysandra (I forget their names) are normally a dark green, with cornflower blue flowers, but they've faded out to a fantastic shade of purple/brown.

The blueberry leaves with some raindrops are even more tenderly purple--maybe catching the color of the sky.

And as the sleepy rhododendrons go dormant--their leaves get dusky as over ripe plums. And it's surprisingly beautiful.

So with all this purple foliage and flowers, I felt inspired to make a flower of my own. Here is a paper hybrid of some sort which I fiddled with recently.

I enjoyed shaping the paper, incorporating different papers and inks. I found some old maps of my cousin's home state, and a few pages of interesting text to add to the petals. Finished with a few beads, some wire, and some ribbon--ta da.

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