I have great neighbours

 At the end of April last year I came home to find a bundle of excellent quality card stock end cuts in the mailbox - a gift from a neighbour down the street.

Already being cut was a great benefit and the heavier paper doesn't require as much reinforcing at the punch hole. I made about 40 words for this first round. The blustery weather has made them fun to watch but hard to photograph. As of this evening, I had not noticed that any had fallen. The fine paper endured the whipping winds we had today.

 One word remained hanging from last year when I went to hang this year's crop up, in fact not a word, an acronym: LBB, Little Brown Bird. This fragment, found in last autumn's leaves, is folded, but is a harbinger....

Chromologism

I toyed with a lot of ideas before deciding on this April's set of words. They are all about colour.

I have always loved paint chips and the names that paint manufacturers give to the shades are often poetic but we do struggle to name colours. Anything beyond the basic elements of a colourwheel or spectrum is subject to a lot of personal interpretation. Think about Avocado - do you think of the flesh? the skin? the pit? The digital world has given us RBG and Hex codes, providing a certain amount of standardization but for most of us a word or two is far more likely to stir an emotional response, a memory, an idea of the colour or a sensation than a string of numbers and letters.

Think about that box of crayons, or, if you grew up in Canada, your Laurentien coloured pencils (Poppy Red and Peacock Blue!) or that nice tray of watercolours. Almost everyone I know has a special association with a colour from those boxes, some word that was magical or mysterious.

But now it's springtime and those of us in these Northern parts get a fresh influx of colours to our palettes as the buds start to open and the leaves and blossoms appear...what colour ARE they?

Meadow Verdant Grass

Beryl Apple Leaf

Emerald Celadon Chartreuse

Mint Sisken Olive

Viridian Sage Pea Verdigris 

Olivander Citron Leek 

Terre Verte Bottle

Harlequin Brunswick Butter

Malachite Sap Sea

Fern Forest Jungle

Gamboge Foxglove Nettle

Asparagus Artichoke Avocado

Absinthe Mass Pine 

Teal Willow Peach Blossom

Vernal Tones Primrose Ivory

Jonquil Glaucous Amber

Orpiment Snow Saffron

Xanthous Lemon Cream

Buff Lily Lilac

Tulip Robin's Egg Amethyst

Hyacinth Lavender Violet

Pansy Plum Orchil

Mauve Heliotrope Kelly

Minium Banana Straw

Champagne Corn Husk Honeysuckle

Eau-de-Nil Mushroom