Posts Tagged ‘ocean’
harvesting colour – memorable colour
I am starting to think about some of the colours I hope to capture in my dyeing projects. In my reading I have discovered that plant colours come from three groups of plant pigments:
- the porphyrins – includes chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants that enables photosynthesis to occur
- the carotenoids – includes the yellows of carrots and the red lycopene of tomatoes
- the flavonoids – the yellows of flower petals and the red, blue and purple anthocyanins of strawberries and blueberries
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In my poems, I want to portray these colours with words. A quick look in the thesaurus shows how many words we have for the various colours:
- green: emerald, sage, verdigris, malachite, beryl, aquamarine, chartreuse, lime, olive …
- yellow: ivory, lemon, saffron, gold, sallow, buff …
- red: scarlet, carmine, vermillion, crimson, ruby, garnet, maroon, brick, rust …
- blue: azure, phthalo, cerulean, indigo, sapphire, turquoise, watchet, navy, teal …
- purple: lilac, violet, mauve, magenta, heliotrope, plum, lavender …
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
trying to glimpse the beach 6-10
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pines inland of beach on Ile de Ré (image from Street View)
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map showing distance travelled (map from Google Earth)
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Biking from one town to the next on Ile de Ré, I know the beach and the ocean are just ‘over there’, but a berm, a dune and a sea-wall prevent any good views …
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road along beach near Le Martray on Ile de Ré – beach is across the berm to the right (image from Street View)
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Once in a while, I catch a glimpse of the beach through a private yard …
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glimpse of beach (image from Street View)
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On the right side of the road, facing inland, I have excellent views of the salt marsh …
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salt marsh (image from Street View)
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A large area of these marshes are dedicated to producing salt …
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map showing rectangular salt reclaiming areas (map from Google Earth)
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I also see the extensive vineyards I have encountered elsewhere on the island …
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rows of vines in vineyards near Ars-en-Ré (image from Street View)
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Best View: grapes ripe on the vine …
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‘grapes’ June 5, 2013 Jane Tims
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Copyright Jane Tims 2013
a moment of beautiful – the sound of the sea
the space: a park bench by the edge of the sea
the beautiful: the sound of the breakers, sorting over cobbles on the shore
On a recent vacation to Nova Scotia, we had the time to sit and watch the breakers roll into a cove along St. Margaret’s Bay. The sight of the crashing waves was inspiring, but the sounds were unforgettable… first, the sweep and crash of the incoming waves…
then the clatter as the outgoing wave dragged at the cobbles along the shore…
My husband suffered through my recitation of a few lines of Matthew Arnold’s poignant ‘Dover Beach’, but mostly we were quiet, overwhelmed by the sound of the sea.
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greed
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jealous of its pretty
shaped and rounded stones,
the ocean mutters,
claws them back
clatters its dinner forks
over biscuits and gravy
hoards jellybeans
by the handful
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© Jane Tims 2012
eight days – glass floats
In days before plastic and styrofoam, fishermen used glass and wood to make floats to keep their nets buoyant.
These floats are colorful symbols of the people who make their livelihood from the sea. In fishing communities in the Maritimes, we often see fences and walls festooned with painted wooden floats and buoys.
Glass floats are rarer because they are so breakable. At home, my Dad’s collection of sea shells was always accompanied by a couple of glass floats he found at auctions. On my piano, I have a small collection of glass floats in my favorite color, green.
The tradition lives into the next generation… when I visited my family in Ontario for eight days, earlier this month, I was delighted to see a basket of variously-colored glass floats on the hearth of the wood stove.
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glass floats
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the fog’s still glow
penetrates glass
and air incorporated
an age ago
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weightless, flamboyant
on salt water
swell
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glass inflation
tethered by hemp
on an ocean
whipped to froth
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© Jane Tims 2012
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