I’m up to my knees in blooming weeds beside a paved road in the country. A battered truck slows to a mere crawl and the driver calls out, “Everything okay?”

“Yessir! I’m taking pictures!”

He breaks into a smile that spreads across his dark face like an invasive blooming plant. His voice holding laughter, he calls out, “Alrighty!  Watch for snakes!” And he speeds up, his old Ford rattling down the road, the truck’s window rolled down, his arm hanging out, his hand tapping the door like a musician playing a drum.

At this time of the year, in rural Georgia, wild blooms cluster near barbed wire fences, plowed fields, and green pastures. Blue weeds, purple weeds, yellow weeds, white weeds—weeds and wildflowers in rich colors paint the Georgia landscape.

On this outing, I spot bunches of red sorrel near a fence line. Wild radish grows near butterfly weed, blue and yellow blooms side by side, two colors Vincent van Gogh loved and slathered on his canvases.

Cows graze in a pasture colored with several hues of green: forest green, chartreuse, sage green, bluish green. Periwinkle hugs the borders of ditches in waves of pale blue. Lyreleaf sage has popped up all over the place and will attract butterflies.

Rolled hay makes me think of Claude Monet’s Wheatstacks. The artist painted the same stacks of wheat numerous times, at different times of the day, to show the differing light and atmosphere.

I come from this place, from wild roses growing over fences, from dirt roads under green canopies, from derelict barns crumbling under vines, from van Gogh yellow, Rembrandt brown, Vermeer blue, Cassatt red. I come from Georgia’s palette of colors. Much of the beauty of South Georgia hides in unlikely places, secrets tucked here and there, secrets growing among other secrets, secrets spilled like seeds, secrets overflowing with blooms. Georgia, beautiful Georgia.

I come from this place, from wild roses growing over fences, from dirt roads under green canopies, from derelict barns crumbling under vines, from van Gogh yellow, Rembrandt brown, Vermeer blue, Cassatt red. I come from Georgia’s palette of colors. Much of the beauty of South Georgia hides in unlikely places, secrets tucked here and there, secrets growing among other secrets, secrets spilled like seeds, secrets overflowing with blooms. Georgia, beautiful Georgia.