Saturday, December 11, 2010

Winter's Bones...

The color of springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination....

Terri Guillemets



I recently saw a movie filmed in and about our Ozarks called Winter's Bone...What a dark, depressing, draining portrayal of the hardships, struggles and perseverance of a teenage girl caught up in the consequences of her methamphetamine -manufacturing  family .  I'd like to say it was simply fiction and that it didn't represent the truth or depict our Ozarks fairly, but I work with the public enough to realize that even though I live in my happy middle class, chicken raising, garden growing world, there are others that aren't as fortunate.  One element of the movie that emphasized the mood of the plot--see above, depression--was the fact it was shot in the winter..The coldness, the gray colors or lack of color, added to the hopelessness of the characters--definitely not a "feel good" movie.  







You can either get caught up in the stillness, lack of color and lifelessness of the season and become a sort of "gardener hibernator" or view this as a time to examine what's left--the bones of our gardens. It seems that it's easier to imagine or remember the colors of the past season by viewing the remnants of the garden.



I think that black and white photography illustrates the beauty of the frame work of the spent flowers, the limbs of the leafless trees and the structure of the frozen plants.. By removing the brown tones of the dying plants and high-lighting or focusing on the skeleton, the details and contrasts of the photo are emphasized. Suddenly something old, dirty, dead-takes on a new vision...



Leaving some of the flowers undisturbed not only provides food and shelter for the birds and wildlife, it's becoming an acceptable practice--i.e.."winter interest."  I think that term is actually intended to refer to plants that provide some sort of color or interest through out the winter such as berries, seed pods, ornamental grasses, evergreens...  I know that I tend to overuse the phrase.



In fact, every bed that I neglect to clean up, every pot that I fail to put away, every garden tool that hasn't found it's way back to the shed--winter interest...



View my chicken-blog at communitychickens.com

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