Yellow

Sometimes bad habits aren't simply the obvious ones like cracking your knuckles or eating too much sugar (I do those, too). Sometimes they're woven into the infinitely complex fabric of your brain, history and personality, and you realize that not only have they been hurting you, but (far, far worse) those who you love, too. Bad brain habits. They're the hardest to break, and sometimes the hardest to see. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't, at times, feel a bit hopeless about the future. But...I realized the other day while looking through recent photos on the computer, that one color kept jumping out at me over the last month: yellow.

It was in the patterns of this gorgeous swallowtail butterfly who lived in our backyard for about five minutes one day, so engrossed in his nectar-drinking that it let me get close enough to actually brush it's wingtips:


It was on the playground:


It was in the feathers of this goldfinch, and many others, who gorged on the thistle seeds I put out for them in the backyard:


In this gazania, one of the first of the season:


In candy hearts:


In my amazing 102-year-old grandmother's sweater on her birthday:


And even in the icing on her chocolate-and-custard cake:


So, without getting too deep or too melancholy, I'm just going to say that although I'll always be a purple girl (ask Evan, he'll tell you), I'm going to keep looking out for the yellows every day. Because yellow is a good color for hope. And we could all use a little of that in our lives. Or a lot.