Colour!

Well, sadly, there's not as much of it as usual here in Kingsville, Ontario, due to the worst winter in recorded history in this area.

Green grass, some buds on a few trees, blue, blue Lake Erie.  April 19, 2014

However, I captured quite a show from Mother Nature on our 3-day drive back home.  Inspired by the array of colours, I often see quilts in my mind when I'm outside.

Azaleas on Tybee Island

Quilt idea: grey and white with hits of fucshia and sprinkles of lime green, yum!  A chocolate brown sashing and/or border!

I said last year, and it was the same wee-ooh, wee-ooh experience this year, that it is like we are going back in time as we head north.  We leave summer heat in Florida to see full-on spring mid-way through the trip, to end in early spring here.

On Tybee Island, we opted for a quick walk/run down to the beach for a pic or two, rather than a beach walk with the dogs, as it was FREEZING (left 90s the day before to see only 60s in Savannah) and blowing a gale off the Atlantic Ocean. 

Tybee Beach, GA

Quilt idea: Can't you see a sand and blue quilt?  Maybe 1/2 square triangles (they are on my mind after this trip) with maybe a hit of yellow for the sun and deep teal-almost-black for a dark?  And sidenote:  I WANTED that piece of driftwood!!  It was bigger than me, however, so....not gonna happen.

I need to know what these trees were all through Georgia, the Carolinas Virginia, West Virginia and a few in Ohio. 

Some of those trees seemed planted, but so many were just random in the bush, clearly wild.  I know cherry trees are out in Washington, DC, and I know many berry trees as well as apple have quite the show, but these intense purples you see below were jaw-dropping stunning.

Even at 70 mph (110kph) through a dirty windshield, these knocked my socks off.  South Carolina.

Just outside Winston-Salem, NC

Quilt idea:  I can SO see a fresh leaf-green and wisteria purple quilt, 1/2 square triangles, maybe with some white in it.  Ooh, even a scrappy quilt like Cynthia's from her April 18, 2014 post!!

Stunning, no?  This is just south of the Virginia state line.

I hope you get how random and wild they are.  And how much more joyful as a result, at least in my mind.

These are in West Virginia

Cool!

I had to end this post with such a cool picture, not to mention experience:  driving through a mountain!  It zoomed me back in time to 10 years old, when my dad drove us out to Vancouver, and we went through several tunnels in the Rockies.  Here is a link to this amazing feat of engineering that took 5 years to build.  Great choice of name.  Just sayin'.

How I do love the Appalachian Mountains.  One of these trips, we plan to follow some of highways through them, as opposed to the Interstates.  We did go off the Interstate in Ohio, and both of us just loved it.  It reminded me of Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent.  While finding a link for his website, I discovered that HE walked in the Appalachians, so I will have to read that book, A Walk in the Woods.

Speaking of reading, it's time to read and have my tea.  Outside!  In the sun!  On our patio!  It's 60 (15C) here right now, yahoo!  I never did finish Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, which is really really good, and is all about Savannah.  Then it's downstairs to my quilting corner.  :-)