The Colors of Summer Swirl and Dance.

My mundane nine-hour drive came alive when I noticed the colors, especially the green. The trees, bushes, and vines spoke in thousands of shades of one color: green.

Emerald, lime, chartreuse, mint, and seafoam splashed across the landscape, and no two trees sported the same shade or hue of green. Every leaf reflected the light, creating its color, unique and remarkable.

The same phenomenon surrounded the stark white shirts and socks hanging on a makeshift clothesline. Millions of greens framed the clothing flapping in the summer breeze.

But those stark white pieces would not remain plain, unadorned. No.

We had big plans. A fantastical, humongous, creative endeavor to swirl, squirt, seep color into fabric—a tie-dye extravaganza.

I will spare you the tedious description of preparing the clothing, mixing the dye solution, adding the dye to the solution, twisting and tying designs, choosing the dye colors to create patterns, waiting 48 hours for the great washout, and washing the results three times with a double rinse, drying, and finally, proudly showing off our handiwork.

The short version: our adventure spanned across four days of anticipation, hard work, and triumph.

In the end, we each used the same eight colors, but how we placed those colors, the amount of dye, and the method of gathering fabric created an array of colors and designs. Every shirt, sock, or bag was unique.

Just like us.

Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, explains how she saw color:

For me, too, there is exquisite color. I have a color scheme that is my own . . . Orange gives me a happy, cheerful feeling, partly because it is bright and partly because it is friendly to so many other colors. Yellow signifies abundance to me. I think of the yellow sun streaming down. It means life and is rich in promise. Green means exuberance. The warm sun brings out odors that make me think of red; coolness brings out odors that make me think of green.

This week’s challenge: Notice. Notice the color in your world, What do you see? How does it make you feel? What do you hear?