Study in starkness 

Closing soon: one of the most beautiful outdoor art exhibits of this (or any) year.

You could call it, “Beauty in the Barren Times.”
Or you could just look up, and take in the treetops before their leaves obscure the view.

Every year when those leaves fall, branches, twigs and trunks stretch across the canvas of the sky, like massive pen and ink drawings.
On a walk home from work last week, I noticed the palest of green creeping in, a sign of changes — and colors — to come.

I started checking our backyard maple every morning. Day by day, the once bare branches filled with deep red buds.

Today we passed cherries and Bradford pears already puffed out in pink and white.

Watching it all unfold is such a lovely rite of spring, but I always remember the barren beauty.

The show’s almost over. Don’t miss it.

A few weeks ago, when the sun hid behind gray clouds for days upon days, a friend said it looked like the sky’s “equivalent of a frown.”

The sun is back, but the world (and especially this country) has given us little to smile about. Maybe that’s why I’m stumbling on smiles in weird places.

For example, while walking to church, I glanced at a soccer ball left in a neighbor’s yard, and there it was: a smiley face.

 

In our front yard, I looked up at the large Christmas ball hanging from a swoop of greens. There it was again: a shiny smiley face:

(Yes, our Christmas stuff is still up, and will be until the temperature creeps above 32.)

Seeing faces in random objects — or dragons and elephants in the clouds — is a phenomenon called pareidolia. Human brains, always looking for patterns, can see a man in the moon, or a friendly face in the front end of this Austin-Healey:

Photo courtesy of grassrootsgroundswell/Wiki Commons

Maybe a designer with a sense of humor gave us that one. Thank you, whoever you are. 
Thanks, too, for countless other designers who add a touch of whimsy to ordinary objects, letting them take you by surprise on an ordinary day.

The world can be a dark place. Keep looking for the light. 

Whimsy served at Holiday Coffee in Ocean City.

Our son found these to liven up paperwork.
 

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For the science behind pareidolia (pronounced parra-DOH-lia or pear-ray-DOH-lia, depending on who you ask), go here:
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/health-and-medicine/pareidolia

For information about immigrant incarceration in the United States, including the for-profit prison system, go here:
https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/about