Why Not Orange?

In the past few days I have been adding some photos to my decorating ideas folders. I noticed in the hundreds of photos that there was an absence of orange. I was not surprised; I dislike the color orange.

I don't look good wearing the color orange. (In fact, I try to avoid orangish-red and stick with bluish-red). However, I also don't look good in yellow, but my decorating folders have scads of photos with yellow. My flattering fashion palette doesn't include peach or coral, but I like those colors better than orange. I wear a lot of purple, but not many of the interior decorating schemes had purple. So part of my aversion to orange might be a lack of exposure, but that can't be all of it.

At the mall on Sunday, a lady rounded the corner wearing a bright orange top. I mentally recoiled; it was almost visceral. She looked fine in the orange so why this reaction?

I guess there is a science or psychology of color preferences. Supposedly 35% of Americans like blue best. I fall into that group.

Some of the preferences are culturally based. Some of the preferences might be because of individual associative memories. 

Orange is such an attention-grabbing color that it isn't used much in home decorating except as small accents. I associate orange with traffic cones, pumpkins, the sun, autumn leaves. Except for the traffic cones, I have mostly positive associations with orange. However, when I think of orange I tend to think most of food: the fruit, winter squash, yams, peaches.

Do you know somebody whose favorite color is orange? Why do you think that is the case?

A Little Time Outdoors

This afternoon we acted on an invitation to visit an acquaintance's 4 acres of woods and wetlands. It is another beautiful spring day. She showed us her bulldozer; she loves pushing down trees, moving dirt to make trails. Her next project is a gazebo in a grove of trees. She will be busy all through her retirement years if her health holds up.

As we drove the gravel road back to her house, the sign Caber Woods appeared. She said a caber is a Scottish pole and because her wetlands have lots of poles (dead limbless trunks), it is an apt name.

Her mother is a neighbor of ours at Grace Village Robin Hood condos; however, I saw this family occasionally as the parents served as missionaries over the border into Mexico the same as my aunt and uncle. Linda's husband later worked at Grace College when we were employed there.

They bought the property almost 20 years ago, putting a double wide trailer on it. About 10 years ago they removed the trailer and had a manufactured home set on the grounds to which they added a garage.

We saw Linda about town, but it was a few weeks ago when we attended an introductory meeting about ACRES Land Trust at Grace Village that she told us about her property and invited us to come visit.

It is not far from Highway 30, but is peaceful with lots of birds, turtles, frogs, and other critters. She has a big shady patio as well as benches and chairs in the sun to enjoy the outdoors.

More work than I would want in retirement, but it is a nice haven for her mother and aunt to while away time.

Linda has flowers well-suited to naturalization. One plant I asked about turned out to be lamb's ear. She has volunteer plants poking up. She told me I was welcome to take some. Maybe next week I will go back and get some as my portulaca that was just starting to peek through the soil apparently has died from all of the standing water in our heavy rains. The Lamb's Ear could propagate and become a ground covering replacement. Doesn't bloom until summer though.

Do you have any experience with Lamb's Ear? Will it spread so much that I will be sorry I planted it?
I need something besides bare dirt and  weeds behind my condo.

Frogged

You may remember I bought 3 skeins of purple yarn at a moving sale. I started knitting the pattern below.

However, I am a tight knitter, and the knit two together section was difficult for me. After doing 3 rows, I decided I didn't like the way this "lacy" part looked. I did like the way this yarn with its variegated purple/blue looked in the seed stitch (the first part of the cowl).

So, I frogged (unraveled) all of the knitting I had finished and designed my own cowl done in all seed stitches. I did the seaming today. Not very pretty; I don't have experience doing seaming. It will do, however.

I was unable to get a photo with the true colors in the finished cowl. Though the photo below the cowl is a bit blurry, it represents the variegated yarn colors better, still not quite as purple as in reality. The wool yarn was excellent to work with.

Fort Wayne Children's Zoo

We had nice weather the past few days. Finally, the rain has stopped. Today there was nothing scheduled on our calendar so we drove to the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo.

The parking lot was almost full. I guess everybody had the same idea to take advantage of the beautiful spring day. A lot of the area schools ended yesterday for summer break, too.

Fort Wayne Children's Zoo is set among Franke Park. It is open April 22-October 8 this year. The larger animals have spacious natural exhibits. Unfortunately, many of the species related to dogs and cats were sound asleep, often in a far back corner of their abode. The male lion was right up against the glass divider sleeping, but Ina the female was on a knoll alert.

We did not ride any of the attractions (train, sky car, log "canoe") which cost extra. The sea lion show was fun to see. The four females balanced balls on the tip of their noses and played catch with the trainers. They did aerial jumps, waved a flipper, stood their tails up in the air. This show takes place twice a day.

The black-footed penguins were huddled together in the shade when we first went by, but later they came down to the water.

The zoo is divided into 4 main areas: African Journey, Indonesian Rain Forest, Australian Adventure, Indiana Family Farm (with petting zoo), but there were animals in a central area such as the sea lions, penguins, lynx, capuchin monkeys, prairie dogs.

The zebras and wildebeests had such a large grazing area, you never got close.

I think that is why I liked the giraffes. People could feed them lettuce leaves; they came right up to a platform.

As I mentioned before, the wild cats were sleeping (lions, Sumatra tigers, serval, lynx) except the lioness. No elephants or rhinos or hippos or bears at this zoo. You walked into an enclosure with the kangaroos. They pretty much stayed together.

Orangs and monkeys were mostly awake. The cutest little  De Brazza's baby monkey born about a month ago was frolicking around. I thought the Australian reef displays were well done, and kids seemed to like the stingray pool (barbs had been removed). Lots of small display cases of little frogs and other reptiles balanced out the large mammals. There was a large python and komodo dragon as well.

Lots of domestic and exotic birds, too.

And of course lots of the human species to observe while eating pizza for lunch and an ice cream cone later.

That's a drinking fountain inside of the lion's mouth. There were several kid-sized drinking fountains, but I think there should have been adult height ones; I didn't see any.

The food was rather expensive, but I think there was a pavilion for picnicking. Lots of bathrooms, benches for sitting often in the shade. It took us about 4 hours at a leisurely pace, including the 10-minute sea lion show and eating food, to see the zoo. I probably wouldn't return unless I had little kids to take there though. I enjoyed the time outdoors.