Golden

It’s a color we haven’t seen in New England since autumn, when half of the maples turned gold and the other half turned red: a clash of primary colors. In the meantime, winter was a time of gray and white, starkly monochromatic and more trying, I think, for its lack of color than for its intensity of cold.

In winter, we saw occasional splashes of color: a dash of red on a passerby’s hat, or a welcome shot of green on a knitted scarf. And year-round, there is in Boston at least the briskly bright yellow of taxicabs, and the similar shade of reflective vests worn by cyclists and joggers to avoid getting hit by those same taxis. But the gold of the season’s first forsythia is different: living and thus far more precious. Even the most brilliant neon doesn’t glow with the ardor of a forsythia in full flower, for these cells are alive and burning, not so much carrying color as singing it.

We haven’t seen this color naturally occurring in New England since autumn, for in winter not even the sun burns yellow, its winter glare being harsh and white, the color of ice. Only after the trees leaf and the sun’s rays are tempered by green will they turn yellow like a child’s crayon. In the meantime, our most trusted trove of gold grows on trees.

I am, apparently, so smitten with this particular forsythia in Newton’s Waban Square, I blogged a nearly identical picture this time last year (click here, then scroll to the second photo).