Not Just For Fall Anymore

Dreams of summer past......fiery lily after the rain.
(Click pictures to enlarge)

"Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow."~ Wassily Kandinsky

Yes, I know it is Sunday and I missed the photo hunt by a long shot. Still, I had these already in the works and thought they were beautiful and frankly, I was just too "brain" tired to focus on a different thought. Orange has always been a warm and inviting color in my book. I had an orange room... not quite this bright, but almost... when I was in college. It was the first time in all the years that someone actually asked me what color I wanted my room painted. Typically, the parsonage walls were painted very pale.... pale blue, pale beige, pale pink. In fact, most of the time, my room was SO pale of a pink that you had to hold a bright white paint chip sample next to the wall to even tell that it was pink at all. I was in college and would only spend two summers in the house before getting married, but for those two summers I had a bright and vivid orange room. It was wonderful!

I have outgrown the bright orange for walls, still I like the more muted tones that remind me of a Tuscan sunset. And I still love the orange of fall leaves, mixed with those of red and gold, as well as the flaming oranges bursting forth in the spring and early summer lilies.

Thoughts of Autumn present.... just in time for Halloween.

Fall mums are everywhere. We have those in dark magenta, deep cranberry red and these golden tangerine shades. Each year my mom loves these flowers on the porch or step and after they fade, most people simply toss them out. The first year I let them go too long and they looked completely dead. Still I planted the roots and the sticky stubs and waited. The green leaves started poking up through the sticks and to my amazement, it survived and thrived and ended up a much larger plant than the original. So the second year I did the same and last year as well. This spring I followed the recommendation to dig them up and "root prune". In this process the root ball is cut and reduced by at least half, then re-planted. I also snipped off the early buds... before July... to try and thicken up the plants. It worked! And I even took the biggest section of the trimmed off root ball and planted it in the back yard. Now I have dark magenta purple mums in full bloom there as well.

So, what color should I choose this year.... more red, pale yellow, gold or more orange?

(end of post)
Saturday Photo Hunt (on Sunday) ~ "orange"