Love in the Valley

Sometimes you get a tune stuck in your head and it stays there all day. This morning I woke up with Coldplay singing 'Yellow' and it was very pleasant and it got me thinking about the colour yellow .It's a funny colour. It is the colour of sunshine and happiness and it is bright and cheerful, but hardly anyone ranks it as their favourite colour. It is one of the colours of the rainbow and is a primary colour so you become familiar with it at nursery school. Mixed with red it turns orange, with blue it goes green . It is quite disappointing to see it go from such a bright optimistic colour to a sludgy brown in my grandchildrens' paintbox and never the same again.It is lovely teamed with bright blue in summer like in Provence.
Here is a rhyme from my children's book about yellow food.

There once was a funny young fellow
Who'd only eat food that was yellow,
After cheese, chips and custard,
He ate bananas and mustard
And then said, 'I don't feel very well oh'.

There is a poem by George Meredith (1828 -1909) that has a lovely title but is extremely long, far too long for my coffee break post. It is somehow tied up with the myth of Persephone. She was the one who was so beautiful that Hades came out of the underground and kidnapped her. After a while he let her come up above ground from March to June and that is how the Ancient Greeks explained the changing of the seasons. When Persephone came up to see her family it was Springtime.

So I'm just going to give you one verse from this poem and it's all about how yellow is the colour nature has chosen to  paint the world in early summer.

Love in the Valley,

'Yellow with birdfoot- trefoil are the grass glades,
Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf,
Yellow with stone crop, the moss mounds are yellow,
Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf,
Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle,
Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine,
Earth in her heart laughs, looking at the heavens,
Thinking of the harvest, I look and think of mine.