Evergreen

The recent storms in Seattle have stripped fall from the trees. What bright yellow and red leaves there were left now lay in soggy piles over storm drains, blocking the rain water which "piles up" in turn, creating small lakes along the side of and into the roads. The loss of the color makes the days feel even more dreary.

What I tend to forget is how much color -- green -- is left. The majority of trees in Cascadia are evergreen. No matter the time of year, the landscape never looks stripped. It is dark color, but color all the same. When I appreciate this most is when I am seperated from it... when I am in an alternate winter landscape of bare deciduous trees, lacy forests of brown-grey branches holding up the monochrome sky.

Even the undergrowth stays green in the Northwest, with the sword ferns and rhodedenderons and moss. It is more spare, but it is not bleak. And rarely is there snow in the lowlands. This time of year we bring it inside as well... cedar and fir bows, swags of holly, laurel, and pine. We are surrounded by green, that lovely, dark, winter green.