Waiting

Escaping from the office for a walk, I see that the line of bushes on the far side of the parking lot are becoming tinged with red. I wonder how anything so green can also be partly red as the colors are complements, opposites on a color wheel; they don't mix at all. But they share space on individual leaves on these bushes which will be scarlet in another month. I remember how gorgeous they have been in the past three years and imagine them as they will be again. The blue of the late summer sky with the deep greens and hints of changing color make me wish I knew how to paint. I wish the same thing every year at about this time.

I know the variety is called euonymous, or burning bush. Two years ago I was so captivated by the color and its dramatic effect at the end of the day, that I went to a friend with landscaping experience just to ask him if he knew the name of the bush. He probably thought I was merely flirting, which I may have been, but I remembered the name. Some day I will have a euonymous bush so it will light up my yard like a flame in the autumn, though I will try to forget the failure of the flirting. For now I will watch the color of the bushes change, imagining the swinging from one side of a wheel to the other. I am waiting for autumn, and waiting to forget.