Rick Smith, Columnist
I’m hard pressed to name a favorite color. I like bold, eye-catching colors. But I usually wear black. I like black.
Blue jeans. Black shirt. Black boots. I’m good to go.
Black suit, black Oxford dress shoes, white shirt, and the razzle dazzle of a red tie. Put me in the conference room.
I read that a whole bunch of folks like blue. I like blue – in its place. Blue skies. Sapphires. Indigo Buntings. Blueberry pies. But I’m not particularly fond of people in a blue funk.
Blue was found to be the most popular color in 2023 by Apartment Therapy who went on to say that more than 35% of the world’s population prefers blue. Truth be told, it’s a bold statement to make, but there it was in black and white.
In my navel-gazing time, I have chewed on this, wondering whether or not the residents of Ittoqqortoormiit or Longyearbyen were, if truth be told, really canvassed. We may never know.
Looking out my kitchen window, I see a dense expanse of green foliage – shades of green packed in like sardines. Standing room only. It’s estimated there are around 300 shades of green found in the vast outdoors. That makes perfect sense to me. Green is, after all, one of the most calming colors in the visible light spectrum. It envies no other color.
Red gets a thumbs up in nature. The beauty of a trio of cardinals in the dead of winter, perched among slender branches of holly draped with small red berries. A scarlet sunset bringing some relief from blistering heat of the Texas panhandle. Ripe Medina apples. Sweet Berry Farm strawberries. Papaw Palmer’s slicer tomatoes. Texas-grown Black Diamond watermelon wedges. Red reigns in Texas.
Many Texas gardeners will tell you that gardening is more than a transcendent way to come back down to earth following a day of total ridiculousness, sometimes simply referred to as stupidity, in the workplace. Cousin Val Lou, a true green thumber, is one of those gardeners. She was once quoted in the Garden of Memories Magazine, a funeral rag of floral designs: “My flower garden is an adult version of a coloring book with an endless supply of crayons.” And that it was.
Following that article, a group of ladies from the Oneida Baptist Church Ladies Auxiliary in eastern Arkansas drove all the way to Val Lou’s homestead in northeastern Texas on a whim that her azaleas and toad lilies would be in bloom. They were not disappointed.
Color plays first chair in Texas. From hard-hitting gents and glitzy gals to colorful wildflowers and azalea trails, the Lone Star State steals the show with color. There’s nothing more resplendent than fields of bluebonnets, prairie verbena, Indian paintbrush, and milkweed, abuzz with bees, accessorizing thousands of miles of Texas roadside in late Spring.
The Creator was very kind to Texas. Only after combining pale cadmium yellow, lemon yellow, cadmium red, and a touch to burn sienna to create burnt orange, did He put down His paint brush.
Color me Texan.
Rick Smith is a Jeffersonian and can be reached at theriquemeister@gmail.com.