Simple Clothes - Colors

"Do you have anything black?"

Silly question. Of course I have things in black. I have a whole wardrobe in black. Black is my main color. My other colors are white, gray, red (and variations including burgundy & pink), and turquoise / aqua.

This makes getting dressed really easy. Everything goes with everything. There is very little pattern to worry about. I just have to figure out what the weather is and what my activities will be for the day. I pick out the black trousers (or possibly a skirt) for the day depending on the conditions. Then I add the primary shirt and finally the over shirt. Done.

In the cold weather my primary shirt is often a cotton turtleneck, and my secondary shirt is a vest of some kind, often fleece. In the warm weather my primary shirt is a short sleeve or sleeveless knit shirt, and the secondary shirt is a long sleeved lightweight shirt or maybe a little shrug or bolero. As long as my clothes are appropriate for the daily occasions and weather, I can select just about anything in the closet in any combination. Packing for travel is equally simple.

I wasn't always a black-clothed person. This only happened a few years ago, way into my 50's. Before that I actively resisted having any black clothes at all. I would wear anything BUT black.

I have two shirts I care about that are the results of this folly. In both cases I had the choice of the black version and the other color. In each case I picked the other color even though I knew darn well that the black one was clearly the best one. This happened when I bought a souvenir tee shirt on a trip to Calgary, and most importantly when I bought a sweat shirt at Sears a couple of days after my dad died when Mom and I went shopping just to comfort ourselves, to do something normal that we always enjoyed together. I found this adorable design that said "Home is where the cat is." I wanted the black one. I bought the blue one. I still have the shirt and won't get rid of it anytime soon. But I wish it were black.

I changed over to the dark side after I started going to the zen center. At first I had to wear dark colored things - navy blue, brown, burgundy, dark purple. That was ok. Nobody said anything.

But as I got more serious about practice, I gave in to black. Black trousers go with everything, right? How practical. How about a tee shirt? Good idea. That little black dress that everyone needs, of course.

And that was that. As I sorted through the clothes every season's end, the brown's and navy's and purples gradually went to the Goodwill. I hadn't worn those colors all season. Instead I was always wearing my new black clothes. I'm still wearing my black clothes all the time with a few other colors for the tops, to mix it up a bit. (Even Zen monks wear an under kimono of a different color.) Black, white, gray, red and turquoise - my simple colors.

Now I dress like I had always lived in New York City. Black is my main color, probably for a long, long time. It's so darn simple.

Red Butte Garden - Early Spring 2010

I have started doing my volunteer horticulture work at Red Butte again. I missed one day because we had an odd day of snow last Friday, but otherwise I have worked in the Rose Garden, down by the pond and up in the medicinal and fragrance gardens. So far we are mostly doing cleaning and tidying, getting rid of the debris from fall and winter.

But first things first. When we were working down by the pond we found .......

This mother duck was sitting on something like 11 eggs. She seemed pretty ok about having us close by. We figured she has learned over the years that we humans may be big and loud, but we hand out a lot of food and are nothing at all like owls. eagles, bobcats, mountain lions, Canada geese, etc. Fritz, K, the horticulturist who takes a lot of photos and puts them up on Red Butte's FB page says that animal pictures are always the biggest hits, much more popular than flowers.

That's the only animal picture I have right now, so back to flowers and plants. This is the edge of the creek after about 10 of us got done working there.

And here's what the fragrance garden looks like now. remember this, because before to much longer it will start to look gorgeous.

Right now a few hyacinths are in bloom. Before too much longer there will be a garden filled with hyacinth fragrance.

We have a lot of flowering shrubs and trees right now.

But, of course, the real stars are the daffodils and other flowering bulbs.

As I think I have aid before, I love these tiny blue irises. We've got lots of them.

Lovely as the flowers are now, I know they have only just begun. As you can perhaps see, there is still plenty of room for more to pop up, and believe me, there are many more still to pop up.

Time to think about coming to see the garden yourself. Happy Passover, Easter, Spring to all!