Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week is my favorite color: Green!!
Here’s an essay I wrote years ago about green, in a series about colors. Yes, I know this is a PHOTO challenge but I am going to try to combine the photos and narrative.
Green is the best color because it is the color of nature: plants and trees are green.

Point Defiance Park, Tacoma, WA
When it rains, everything looks greener than ever.

Above Omaha Beach, Normandy, France the day after a rainstorm
In fact, “green” is the new code word for the environmentally conscious. If you are green, you are committed to recycling and conserving the natural resources of our Earth.

I knew I would find something like this in Copenhagen! In the hotel room, a recycling wastebasket!
Green is a combination of two primary colors, blue and yellow, so it has the coolness of blue and the brightness of yellow.

One of Monet’s most famous water lilies paintings shows how an artist mixes and juxtaposes colors to get the desired effect. Various shades of blue and green with splashes of brighter colors make this painting feel cool, lush and pleasing. This painting hangs at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.
There are many hues of green, created by adding more blue for a deeper, darker green or more yellow for a lighter or brighter green.

This special exhibit at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam uses multi-media to take us into the world of Vincent Van Gogh.
Green is everywhere. It’s the color of land on a globe because the land looks green from space.
It’s the color of leaves in the summer …

and pine trees all year round. (Both photos taken in northern Wisconsin.)

It’s one of the colors of Christmas!

At Macy’s on State St. in Chicago, Dec. 2018
When I see a stand of evergreens, I smell the aroma associated with them – the sharp smell of pine. Pine candles are green and I love to smell them!

Scene on the Bearskin Bike Trail in northern Wisconsin
Green is the color of many good things to eat: lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas, beans, sweet peppers. These foods are healthy too, so it’s important to eat them every day. Green represents how plants eat: chlorophyll makes leaves green and it is chlorophyll that captures energy from sunlight and converts it into food for the plant. We humans get some of this energy when we eat green foods.

This is a great book! I recommend it to anyone who desires to eat sensibly and environmentally friendly.
Humans can learn a lesson from the plants and capture sunlight for our own energy needs. In a greenhouse, sunlight comes in and keeps plants warm as well as provides energy for them to stay healthy. We too can be “green” by eating healthy foods, consuming renewable energy from the sun, and enjoying the beauties of nature: the brown earth, the green grass and plants, and the multitude of colors of flowers, birds, butterflies and other creatures.

Butterfly garden, Chicago Botanic Garden, July 2018
People who like green will use green for things in their daily life – drive a green car, wear green clothes, or maybe paint a door green!

Passau, Germany
American cemeteries are usually covered in green grass which is kept neatly mowed. Green is often conducive for quiet contemplation.

More than 9,000 men were buried at the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. All died during the Battle of Normandy which started on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

French cemeteries are not covered with green grass, but loved ones of the deceased often decorate their graves with flowering plants. This cemetery is at Merville-Franceville-Plage.