When I sit at my tan desk, in our beige room, with dull buff carpet beneath my chair, I often have a hard time coming up with color words. I google “synonyms for green,” rifle through crayon boxes, and scroll through images of paint chips and artists’ color names, but I am not usually inspired by what I find.
Then today, in an effort to wring the last few drops of fun out of summer before the kids go back to school, we rode our bikes over to the Virginia Tech horticulture garden, where they love to play in the sprinklers and find flowers in the colors of the rainbow (“Here’s a red one!”, “I found orange berries!”). I had folded up a blog post draft and stuck it, along with a pen, in my back pocket so that I could work on it in the quiet of the gardens while the kids played, and as I scribbled and edited, walking the mulched paths, filling the page with ink, I saw a pale green hydrangea.
“Hey guys, here’s green,” I said.
“Oh, flowers!” our daughter said when she saw them. “We don’t usually find green flowers, we just use leaves for green.”
I studied the hydrangea petals, trying to determine their color, and thought, celadon. Is that what color celadon is?
Yes.
I looked around and saw banana leaves, fir trees, weeping willows, and thought, these are each a different green – dark and glossy for banana leaves, shadowy blue-green for firs, a soft yellow-green for willow. Each plant species is its own hue. And so I started writing. I’m not usually a write-on-my-hand type of person, but my paper was full, and I needed these words.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“I’m writing down all the greens I see,” and wrote sage. “What greens do y’all see?”
They shrugged, as if that were a dumb question, and then our daughter said, “Shamrock.” Yeah, she’s good.
“Inch worm,” said our son.
They ran off to play in the sprinkler, and I sat and filled my hand. A few minutes later they came back dripping, and our daughter said, “We saw some algae in the pond that looked like troll skin.”
“Troll skin! That’s perfect,” I said, and wrote it down.
“Troll skin isn’t a color,” said our son.
“Sure it is – it’s silvery blue-green and warty.”
“Yeah,” said our daughter, “that’s what color the algae was – it was even bubbly like warts.”
On the bike ride home, the kids shouted out more words – “pea,” “yellow-green,” and “olive” – and when I saw my friend Dee, she asked, “Did you get peridot?” Now, thanks to their assistance, and to inspiration from the gardens, when I am sitting in our neutral living room, trying to conjure color words, I have an entire page in my lexicon dedicated to the color green:
banana leaf
jade
grass
lime
troll skin
olive
beryl
malachite
viridian
fern
chartreuse
fir
holly
moss
sea
peridot
forest
pine
kale
kiwi
sage
pea
willow
inch worm
meadow
apple
shamrock
spinach
mint
booger
Special thanks to my friend Dee for peridot, and to our children for shamrock, pea, inch worm, sea, olive, troll skin, and booger.
Butterfly Mind 
Andrea you speak to my heart. I volunteer at the Hort Gardens and loved thinking of your kids flitting about calling out greens, you writing on your hand. Another great post.
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I didn’t know you volunteer there, Judy! We love the gardens. We have flower fairy books that we bring sometimes so we can find the flowers and read poems about them. I’ll think of you when we go now 🙂
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flower-fairies-of-the-garden-cicely-mary-barker/1001938603?ean=9780723259930
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I loved that you wrote on your hand, such a great way to search out inspiration 🙂
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I would have never thought to do it except that I had seen something online about it – a trend of writers writing lines on their hands or something? When my paper ran out I was glad I had seen that.
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What an entertaining, informative, lovely piece of writing. I’m decorating new bathrooms right now–in which green is a major player–in one, green as it applies to the sea. Coming to mind are two more colors for you. One is sea glass green–which really, I think, is the color of old coke bottles; and the other is that green you see shining through a breaking wave below the foam line. I guess we should call it wave green, indeed different from sea green–by the width of a blue whale!
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LOVE sea glass green! Which I would say is slightly different from coke-bottle green (frosted vs. clear), so I’m adding both to my book. And I love the wave-break green you’re talking about – beautifully evocative. Thank you! Sea foam would be another one, wouldn’t it? I think of that as being kind of a creamy minty green.
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Btw, your brides maids’ dresses were celadon…
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I know! I realized that when I googled “celadon” and saw a wedding party with celadon birdes maids’ dresses. As soon as I saw them I realized why the word sounded so familiar 🙂
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Love this list, but had to crack up with “booger” green…that’s one for a box of Harry Potter crayons…lol. You and your children are very observant. 🙂
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Harry Potter crayons – what a fantastic idea!
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I liked this entry. It’s good to see someone encouraging their children to not only see green, but “Troll Skin.” That way of looking at the world will come in handy to them down the line.
And there’s always celery green, if you’re looking to describe something of that particular hue.
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Yes! I just added celery. Thank you for that. And I agree about vocabulary for our kids, both teaching them to value it and learning from them when they pull out “troll skin” or “ravioli lichen.” They provide great material, and since they’re not interested in using it themselves (neither cares about writing… Yet), I’ll use their words til they want them back.
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I absolutely loved this post. I am having some trouble expressing why other than to say I was able to visualize the whole situation unfolding and the humour that lies within.
We have all, in the past, written on our hands to remember information; Whether it be a phone number or a list of items to grab at the store. But, I think it may have become a dying art now that everyone has smartphones at the ready.
It made me wonder when was the last time I wrote on my hand, or even a napkin for that matter. That is the beauty of your piece. Not only did it paint a picture I enjoyed looking at but allowed my mind to wander as well, while staying perfectly on point. Oh, and one more…hunter green 🙂
Love, equanimity, peace.
TimurZ
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How could I forget hunter green? Thank you Timur. And yes, I can’t remember the last time I wrote on a napkin either – thanks for the reminder for those emergency situations (watching a couple in a cafe…)
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I love this post! I can hear the kids shouting out their colors. How about salt marsh green?
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Oooh, good one Mom!
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