It's Green's Scene!
The color of peace
Green is BRILLIANT, amiright?! Just when we think we can’t stand another moment of the flat, metal-gray, unforgivingly-slate skies of winter, spring bursts upon the scene awakening our senses with an undeniably effervescent sparkle. For many of us who live in climates with multiple seasons, spring might seem like a slow, inexorable advance of greenery - a crocus here, a budding tree there. However, I’ve come to realize there is one particular morning each year when I’m abruptly accosted by a literal explosion, a fireworks display, of the many soothing tones of green. In that moment, it’s as if the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades. Does this happen to anyone else?
There’s no predicting when this moment comes and I don’t track it so no help here. What I will say is that when green springs eternal, my mood takes a turn for the better with everything seemingly coming up roses. If April flowers bring May flowers, myriad greens bring on my serene. And, better yet, there’s science to support this phenomenon.
Earlier this year, after an overwhelming urge to shed the cocoon of winter with a lemony lift, I wrote about adding splashes of yellow to my space. If yellow lifts us up with feelings of happiness, optimism, and hope then green’s gifts of nature, peace, calmness, and growth will grab you by the heart, Kerry, and firmly settle you into the comfy seat of your backyard swing, or the mossy green trails of a forest hike, or the utterly sublime silence of a flat green pond surface through which your canoe or stand-up-paddleboard is cutting. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…exhale…into the magic elixir of Green’s Scene.
What follows is a collage of love brought to you by spring 2025 and 2026. Let’s skippity do da through the next several months, allowing green to steal the show.
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We frequently hike the trails near us, part of almost 13,000 miles of trails criss crossing Pennsylvania. Despite the amount of time we spend in their embrace, we’re constantly surprised by new sites, sounds, and scents. More than once already this spring, I attempted to capture the new shoots on the evergreen trees along the trails. So far, the slight breeze in the woods has stymied my attempts at the perfect shot, but I persist. The same breezy conditions make it nearly impossible to capture a clear shot of the fiddlehead fern’s curlicues of new growth. Fiddleheads are the edible, early spring phase of ostrich ferns. Lasting only a few days after appearing, if they’re not harvested they unfurl into full fern fronds, which are inedible. Ferns, as it turns out., are 350 million years old, representing one of the earliest flora on the planet
No one was more surprised by pre-historic fabulosity than we were when we walked up on a massive, algae-encrusted, common snapping turtle presumably resting on his trek across the trail, from one wetland side to the other in Killbuck, Ohio. Although a young pup when compared to the fiddlehead ferns, the common snapping turtle has been around for 90 million years. We didn’t measure this one, silly us, and we were the only ones, as far as our eyes could see, who were on the trail at that time. I’m glad I took tons of pics, but it’s difficult to estimate his age, weight, and full length. I have no pictures with his neck extended, but given that we think he was at least 2 feet long as pictured, it’s reasonable to estimate that he was possibly more than 3 feet long because their necks can extend to between 10 and 15 inches. It’s impossible to articulate his girth, but from quite a distance away he looked like a massive rock resting on the edge of the paved path. After some research, he seems comparable in size to Big Snap Daddy (first 3 pics in the gallery below), a world record sized common snapping turtle weighing 102 pounds who died in April 2026, at the Schramm Education Center, at the ripe old age of 96-100 years old. Further digging indicates that although male common snapping turtles’ growth slows significantly after 20 years of age, they can live beyond 100 human years and tend to die of old age because they have few natural predators. Wow. This means our crusty friend from the wetlands was almost certainly well over 50 years old. I would never put such an ancient and magnificent creature in a zoo, but I would love to see him again some time.
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I don’t know if I even want to be friends with anyone who doesn’t like green.
Portals to other worlds beckon us into their hidden kingdoms, which could only be of divine origin as they reveal hidden treasure cachets of green that stick in our memories for future, calming recollection. The best part of plumbing the depths of these troves is discovering how brilliant green can be with it’s complimentary ‘twin’, red. I think I’ve found my next Christmas postcard Francesca Bossert.
And sometimes, all I need is a magic carpet to maybe finally touch the astonishingly, brilliantly beautiful skies, with a stage set made of Pennsylvania blue so enchanting that my springly green appears surreal when stood beside it in this play. The third shot shows an overachieving skeletal tree rising above the forest line, shown again in the eighth photo zoomed as far as my trusty phone is able.
When’s the last time you wiled away a morning in the wilderness? Or, the afternoon reading about the (mis)adventures of those who do?
Subscribe to Bren’s Buzz and you won’t miss a moment. These documentaries, in the Nature link on my site, make lovely gifts for friends and family.
And it doesn’t take a forest to make us green with envy. Our backyard is just the enviable natural paradise to which many of us wish we’d escape. I lie down and stare up through the trees in the small glade beyond the fountain pictured in this gallery. And, even the nearly dead but boldly regal 270 year old oak tree out back makes a postcard-perfect country road photograph on a lovely spring day. Bellissima!
And let’s not forget, all the other green flora and fauna we see in our travels including skunk cabbage, frog eggs, smaller turtles and a magnificent pair of mallard ducks I captured earlier this spring.
Nature is one of my most popular writing topics overall, found under Nature on my website. Share with all the nat-geo wannabees in your circle.
As a matter of fact, no nature post is complete without the water element. Much of water tends to look silver, or various shades of blue or green. Pennsylvania’s vernal pools, like the one spawning skunk cabbage above, appear a coppery green, akin to pond scum but much more mirrored, reflecting the forest around them. The wetlands in Ohio gave us a rare peek at a ‘golden-crowned turtle’. Of course I made that name up, but her head definitely appears gilded in this photograph.
Don’t forget to bring the greenery outdoors inside your cozy spaces. My son grows herbs and ‘fosters’ unwanted plants, which you can see in this GIANT fern someone at work ‘gave’ to him.
I’ll leave you with this beauty of our backyard on a grayer day that still blinded me with multiple shades of glorious green!
As the main character in my second color installment, what vibe do you feel from the green in your life?
The first in this color series…
This is a perfect post for Taurus season! Long live the green earth!
Phew ! Talk about mellowing out. Looking through your pics with the sounds of the Spa Channel streaming in the background. Calming and relaxing to say the least.