The Colour Collaborative: March - Bud

"Vague as fog and looked for like mail...snug as a bud and at home like a sprat in a pickle jug."

Extract taken from You're by Sylvia Plath.

I don't think any season is awaited with such eagerness, with such a sense of expectancy and anticipation, than spring. 

Summer arrives, sometimes early, sometimes late, (or sometimes not at all, this is the UK) and it morphs in autumn, and then before we know it winter is upon us. But I don't declare "It's autumn!" or "Winter is finally here!" with quite same delight as I do spring. That first warm weekend in March which has me out in the garden, inspecting borders and planting seeds; the satisfaction in seeing the bulbs planted in autumn poking their green shoots upwards; the gentle, tentative warmth of the sun; the joy of snipping the first tulips to bring indoors and put in a jug; £1 bunches of daffodils in the supermarkets; the ever-lightening afternoons and evenings...there is much to celebrate and be thankful for at this time of year.

When we agreed that "bud" would be our prompt for this month's Colour Collaborative post, the first thing to pop into my head was the poem You're by Sylvia Plath. For those that don't know it, it's about pregnancy and Plath's feelings towards her unborn child. It's one of my absolute favourite poems, capturing the wonder and mystery of waiting for a new arrival, those feelings of at once knowing but not knowing the baby growing inside you. Of course there are many parallels between spring, pregnancy and birth; Easter, new life, eggs, buds, lambs, growth. Those feelings of waiting and anticipation that spring provokes remind me of expecting my own babies. Waiting, waiting (mine were both two weeks overdue, we did a lot of waiting), looking for signs. Now? Today? No, not today. Not knowing exactly when they would come but knowing that they would, at some point. Planning, preparing, readying ourselves. It's like the slow approach of spring. A glance out of the window shows sun and blue sky, surely spring is here now. But I open the front door and then go back for my coat, hat and scarf. The wind is cold. No, not today, it's still winter. But it will be spring at some point, we know it will.

Two years ago I planted a camellia in our back garden. It produced nothing during it's first year. And, to my huge disappointment, it produced nothing last year either. This year, I was hopeful. I was expectant. And, so far, I have counted ten fat, pink buds. Ten! When I happened to glance out of the window last week and see that the first had unfurled and opened, I gasped (even though I was on my own, what a weirdo) and then straightaway took a photo on my phone to send to my mum, who planted it with me.

The buds are pale and creamy to begin with and it's hard to guess what their true shade will be. The blooms look different depending on the light and time of day; sometimes pastel and rosy, other times deep-hued and glowing. They carry a graduating ombre of pinks from the bold, raspberry centres to the blanched, delicate, fading edges of the petals. The flowers pop out against the dark green leaves and grey dry-stone wall, providing a welcome burst of colour in an otherwise drab garden, and a reminder that spring always comes. Eventually.

What is The Colour Collaborative? 

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.

If you'd like to read posts by the other Colour Collaborative bloggers, please follow the links below:

Annie at Knitsofacto

Sandra at Cherry Heart

Jennifer at Thistlebear

Claire at Above The River

And this month we are also joined by the lovely Sarah at Mitenska. Please do pop over and read, say hello if you like!