April 21, 2010

Dancing with Degas on the Plains

" Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
  Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!"
        by Thomas Nashe ( 1567-1601 )


When I time it just right I can hop in my car and drive from Denver to Kansas City and have my eyes increasingly filled with the color of spring as I drive East. I leave my house with its just blooming Forsythia and marching tulips to run into a ballet made up of blooming redbud trees some where between Salina and Kansas City.
When I spy those flowering trees, tucked into  new green fields I immediately am reminded of the rows of ballet dancers in tulle which Degas painted and drew.


Ah Edgar Degas in Kansas! Who would have thought it? I know he would have given the glorious color of the redbuds this name.


Dancing among the Spring grasses in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

2 comments:

Eugenie Torgerson said...

Lovely observations. Lovely paintings, you and Edgar. I am just back from a redbud drive from South Bend to Atlanta. Because of the change in elevation, up down over the mountains going south, we saw lightly blooming redbuds, then deeply blooming redbuds, then lightly blooming redbuds. Throw in elegant airy dogwoods for perfect visual punctuation.

Carole Buschmann said...

That sounds lovely!

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