As we sat at a sunny table today, Liz prepared the seeds of a pomegranate for a salad. I was instantly transported back to another time—my childhood—sitting at another sunny table amazed and delighted by the mysterious, jewel-like food my mother had put before us.
The rich colors are as vivid in my mind today as they were then! How do I know? Because they match exactly the color of the bejeweled seeds at today’s table.
How can my mind—clearly more than just my brain—store an image like that all these years? Obviously I’d never want to remember everything I’ve experienced, but such “pomegranate moments” frozen, seemingly forever, are remarkable and, in this case, also delightful.
I’m glad to have photographs to help me remember other moments, some as if I was there recently. Yet I look other photographs and have no memory of who is pictured or where or when.
I confess do enjoy occasionally remembering by looking at “off-season” photographs! On a cold day, a photograph of a sunny flower can be cheering. On a hot day, even the ice or snow in a photograph seems to help me remember being cooler!
So in that spirit, on this cold, gray day of ice and crusty snow, I ask you to imagine green.
A closeup of ferns in my backyard, taken while looking through other ferns. When I imagine green, this is one of the first photographs I think of.
Still Learning To See 
Imagine the ruby jewel tones of the pomegranat juxtaposed against the green of your ferns. No that’s a delight to my imagination! And both are welcomed images of warmer times next to the several hours of blizzard-like conditions that kept us home today!
Thanks. Or maybe pom-ruby, fern green and blizzard white all mixed together!
This is a great one, John. It seems to me that we sometimes need to see an object out of focus to contrast to one in focus in order to see the fine details in the latter…
Indeed! While some things beg to be in focus, I really dislike the trend in nature photography to put everything in ultra-sharp focus.