Bright, Beautiful and Over-The-Top

 I love green things.  Living in southern New Mexico, even with all of it's unique desert beauty, a person can become starved for vegetation.  If you know where to look in the desert, you can find all sorts of living things, but most come in shades of tans, rusts, and brown. There exists a distinct lack of vibrant colors.  Everything is muted except the brilliant blue sky. The desert possesses an austere beauty, stripped of all pageantry and flash. Green things are few and far between and when I get the opportunity to spend some time in the midst of living, beautiful plants and flowers, it rejuvenates my soul and my mood.

I love pageantry and flash.  I miss the vitality that green things just exude.  Being around plants and flowers and water makes me feel alive.  Colors put a song into my soul and brings me joy.  We went to the botanical gardens in Albuquerque this weekend and I had the most amazing time.  Just being in the middle of all the green grass, flowers, trees, plants and water features made me so incredibly, stupidly happy.  I think it must be a throw back from living in South Carolina as a child.  Everything green seems to grow wild there.  Lush and humid and beautiful, the deep south can be a paradise for lovers of nature.  I completely understand why people who move from somewhere green have difficulty adjusting to Alamogordo.  Everyone goes through a transition period where they hopefully become accustomed to the low humidity, the lack of water and vegetation.  Quite a few people, however, become depressed to be in such a dry area.  If they are lucky, they start to see how the desert itself can be quite beautiful, but it takes time and a focused mindset of appreciating differences to really feel comfortable here.  Those things and a heck of a lot of chapstick and a good humidifier!

I totally understand the depression, though.  I went through the same thing when I moved here. I missed the grass that just grew untended, the flowers that bloomed without hours of care and watering.  I  missed the greenness with a passion that few native desert dwellers understand.  I've been in New Mexico for twenty-five years now and I still have moments where I long to be somewhere else, where wildness blooms in the spring, where trees turn a hundred different colors in the fall, and where the smell of green permeates the air.  That's one reason why I appreciated the botanical gardens so much this past weekend.  It smelled green and beautiful and wonderful. I am definitely going to go back again when I need another reminder of how riotous and glorious nature can be.  It was a good weekend for all things bright, beautiful and over-the-top.