Normal
0

false
false
false

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}

I am a person who loves color.  I love brightly colored clothes, I love beautiful flowers, I love painting with bright colors.  But as a transplant to the desert, I have learned to be content with a more subtle palette.  There are grasses here and bushes, but they are not the vibrant green of the East.  The same goes for the trees.  And there are flowers, but they, too, are often subtle.  Except for the yellow ones.  I love the yellow flowers!

Right now there are several plants blooming bright yellow flowers.  It’s so wonderful to gaze out over the gray green, blue green, tan, and wheat-colored plants and grasses and then to suddenly see a burst of yellow.  There are beautiful chamisa or rabbitbrush plants with hundreds of little yellow blossoms.  And then there are the perky sunflowers.  These are not the huge sunflowers with the seeds in their great brown center.  No, these are the plucky little perennials that grow along the roadside all over the southwest.

I am so grateful for these tiny sunny faces bringing color into an oftentimes parched and dusty landscape.  They are such a blessing.

And I realized that sometimes people are like sunflowers.  The world can occasionally seem a bit drab, a bit lackluster, maybe even grumpy and cynical and sad, but once in a while, thank goodness, there is someone who enters the scene and… she shines.  She brings a ray of light into a sometimes colorless world.

I hope that we can all learn to be like the sunflower.  Let’s bring a little color and light into the world.  Let’s radiate some love out there.  Let’s blossom!