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.