All the World's a Monet

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In these days of "don’t do this, don’t go there, don’t do that," I thought I would share "a please do this” with you - “Open your eyes.” We had declared delivering an ever-growing pile of “donate-able” pre-move items we had gathered up in our voluntary social distance isolation as an “essential service.” Goodwill, our close-by default donation site had closed all its donation sites so I got on the Nextdoor Neighborhood site and asked for suggestions. Through them I located Healing Transitions an addiction recovery organization that would see that the donations went directly into the hands of their clients, an organization that was staying open because “recovery can’t wait.” Seemed like a good group, so I loaded up the vehicle and headed out - gloved and masked, naturally.

My GPS wound me out around the airport via roads usually clogged with commuters and commercial vehicles. Today they were largely empty which was a very good thing, as I would have been rear-ended any number of times as my vehicle sank below the posted speed limits as I unconsciously slowed to marvel at the Impressionist wonders unfolding around me. 

Spring is in full flower here in North Carolina. The sky was cloudless allowing the leaves and buds of each tree and shrub to claim sunlight to illuminate its unique shade of green, yellow and gold; its unique shape and twisting that would later be absorbed into the less-defined jade landscape of full summer. Wisteria’s lavender vines cloaked entire hillsides as it gently strangled the lesser foliage it had claimed for its scaffold. Even the kudzu revealed why it was initially thought of as an ornamental vine. The undisciplined wild landscape was occasionally interrupted by more formal plantings that fronted the entrances to residential or commercial enterprises - a classical counterpoint to the improvisational riffs of the wilderness's themes.  The road circled the now-closed Umstead State Park whose barricaded entrances seemed a teasingly flirtatious invitation to its now forbidden vistas.

I arrived and had my donations unloaded by a pleasant, most appreciative cadre of folks, and headed back home. I told my GPS to take a less direct route home in the hopes of encountering new wonders. Unfortunately, that resulted in a route through the commercial backdoor of Raleigh Durham International Airport. But there, too, was interest. The route was largely deserted, winding past vacant observation decks, secondary flight towers, and private hangers I had never seen before.  Everything was eerily silent, and concrete dominated everywhere. I did not encounter another vehicle until I was shuttled onto the main road that encircled the “real airport.” 

As I approached home, Monet reasserted himself. Roadside grasses waved in multi-layered, many hued tiers stepping up to bushes and shrubs that occasionally backed into patches of forest that had escaped the encroaching, now vacant and chastised, efforts of the Department of Transportation. I pulled into the driveway, proud of myself for having resisted the temptation to pull off onto the side of the road to snap a couple pictures while running the risk of being run over by another solitary equally distracted and enchanted motorist. I did take a couple of quick shots down our street that I will share with you. But they hardly do justice to the visual feast I had enjoyed. So go outside - maintaining proper social distance, of course - and open your eyes.

Blogger is being weird about loading the pix from my drive, so I'll just add a couple "in the style of" or "from the workshop of." You will get the idea, and your own will be much nicer.