The verdant green hills of Lake Rebecca

Having grown up in the redwoods, I'm quite familiar with summer green, but where I come from it was in the treetops, not on the ground.The California hills dried gold each summer of my early childhood in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and though things were wetter and greener deep in the redwoods, the Mediterranean climate prevailed by late spring of each year. It was the winter time when California was really green.

Here in Minnesota the seasons are reversed.  The green explodes in springtime, bursting out of every crack in every country road.  By midsummer the state is awash in waves of green prairie grasses, black-eyed-susans scattered to the horizon. The leaves of deciduous trees grow huge by August and look as though they will never fade; the lilies float in every pond, yellow-green duckweed rippling with the ducks.   Last weekend I spent an afternon with my parents at Lake Rebecca Regional Park in Greenfield, Minnesota, west of the Twin Cities.  A breeding ground for Trumpeter swans, we caught the giant birds in their nesting pond.

 In the wintertime, Minnesota goes brown.  Then, if we're lucky, brilliant white.