Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Yellow Season


It's the Yellow Season here in the Pacific Northwest. While by no means exclusive, our early-season plants tend to come in colour waves, with yellow as the introduction to the flowering season. Daffodils, forsythia, skunk cabbage, and of course the inevitable dandelions turn our open spaces and gardens into treasure chests of gold. There will be a blue season and a red before Nature wears motley and serves up an olla podrida of hues. Does this occur universally, or is it solely a phenomenon of the Pacific Northwest? Do east-coast flowers bloom in a succession of colours? Do they follow the same order in Europe? In Australia? In South America? And if they do, they beg the question "Why?" Is there some natural mechanism, genetic or otherwise, connecting colour with other factors? This leads me to another puzzlement: What do other people think about in their idle moments, if not questions like these?

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