Today’s forecast (indeed, the week’s) was for sunny skies and highs near fifty, which, as a practical matter, means in the mid-fifties at a minimum.
Now, the weather seems ready to revert to the last week’s predictions for these early days of March: real cold, high winds, a return of the snow.
A day that dawned near-cloudless, all bright light and warming air, has turned suddenly cold and gray.
Oddly, the land’s progress on its path to spring is more apparent now, beneath the lowering sky. At this time of year, too much sun erases the visibility of the new shoots, coloring what remains mostly dormant grass a wan and washed-out gold. But the new green is there, growing steadily, overtaking the old dead turf a little more each day, and the lack of direct sunlight shows off the jade green of the bright new blades to remarkable effect.
There are other greens, too: no leaves on the trees yet — those remain red buds and fluffy catkins still — but the leaves of the local weeds are already pushing out of the earth of the garden plot. Tree branches are all now thoroughly beaded with the leaves still cocooned inside their buds, and the evergreens have begun to lighten and brighten beneath the warmer winds.
And, of course, there is the green and red of the returned spring bird, the Lewis’s woodpecker, one who shows himself for a few days only once ever three or four years now. This year, it appears that for the first time, he may be nesting here, perhaps already with a mate. His robes are jewel tones, ruby and emerald, but they are merely darker tints in the fresh soft shades of spring.
And cold and clouds and potential snow notwithstanding, spring is here, solidly in contention with winter for every moment and every bit of space. We need to remember, on these bleak and blustery days, that this season’s pale shades, full of promise, herald an earth renewed.
In keeping with the themes of the week just ended, highlighting rainbowed jewels of the earth in full three-dimensional form, today’s featured work manages to be both pale and brilliant simultaneously, not a full rainbow but perhaps a half-spectrum, those lush shades of summer lightened by the chill air of a winter not fully departed. In this instance, it’s a pair of works, necklace and earrings in their own shades of green and red. We begin with the necklace, a graduated marvel of marbled color that evokes the fertile grounds of spring. From its description in the relevant section of the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Petals of Summer Necklace
The petals of summer paint a warming world bright and new. Wings evokes the greening world and the gentle pink of the summer wildflowers with this bead necklace, a graduated collection of orbs and nuggets in shades of rose and jade. The strand is anchored at either end by tiny chips of brilliantly translucent peridot, highly polished yet still freeform and wild as the new growth of leaves. Each section leads to a short length of four round beads of green garnet in ethereal shades of gold and green and rose and wine, each small orb aswirl with shimmering inclusions. The garnet flows into textured nuggety lengths of rhodochrosite, lightly polished chips like geometric petals flowering of their own accord. The rhodochrosite beads flank the bold center section of the strand: sixteen perfect round spheres of unakite, small worlds marbled in the green of summer grass and the antique rose of Indian paintbrush. Beads are strung on sturdy but flexible wrapped bead wire and held with sterling silver findings. Strand is 18″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. First in The Beaded Hoop Collection. Coordinates with From Smallest Seeds earrings. Long view shown below.
Bead wire; sterling silver; unakite; rhodochrosite; green garnet; peridot
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This piece brings together opposing tints on the color wheel in a fashion simultaneously subtle and spectacular. At the center rest old unakite beads of slightly irregular shapes and sizes and naturally textured surfaces, evidence of old-style lapidary work in their making, combining shades of moss and jade, rose and peach, into a series of singular spheres like their own tiny, individual earths. The rose shades are picked up by the rhodochrosite nuggets that extend upward in graduated fashion, aiming toward the peridot chips that serve as anchors. And in between, more marbled reds and greens, this time with jeweled intensity and shimmer: green garnet, which summons together shades of scarlet and gold, jade and ice, all into tiny illuminated orbs.
It’s a combination that finds expression, too, in the coordinating earrings — not an exact match, but so complementary as to leave no doubt that they and the necklace belong together. From their description in the relevant section of the Earrings Gallery:
From Smallest Seeds Earrings
From smallest seeds grow the leaves and petals of summer. Wings combines seeds and blades and blossoms alike in this small stream of pink and green. Each drop is strung on sterling silver wire and anchored by sterling silver earring wires. At the top is a length of four brilliant peridot chips, tiny nuggets like little leaves, followed by a single round translucent green garnet, traced with golden yellow and coppery red inclusions. Beneath the garnet hang eight chip-like nuggets of rhodochrosite, each an antique rose banded and matrixed with bits of white and brown. At the bottom of each earring rests a single large round orb of unakite, shades of peach and pink like wildflower petals marbled with the rich green of the summer grass. Earrings hang 2″ long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Standing Stones Collection. Coordinates with Petals of Summer necklace.
Sterling silver; unakite; rhodochrosite; green garnet; peridot
$155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
These feature all the same stones found in the necklace, with single unakite and green garnet round as focal points. They remind me of spring rains: a rain of softly colored petals settling gently upon an earth freshly green. Like the rain, and the stalks of the flowers, they are just long enough to dance.
And they, like their counterpart in the necklace, remind me that life does not spring, fully formed and intensely hued, from any womb; it has to be nurtured, has to grow into itself. The faint green outside the window is proof that, despite whatever wind and sky bring us today, the pale shades of our threshold world our full of promise, heralding an earth renewed.
It won’t be long now.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
