Poppa, flour bins and Wasabi green... Colour and Memory.

I Don't do pink...... I do , do green. I Love green!  I am particularly partial to earthy greens, Like Plantation Pine and Antique green... those deep slightly dirty greens.. Love em! This year Deco Art introduced ( as they usually do) a host of New colours,one in particular struck a cord... Wasabi Green.

It has taken me quite awhile to figure out what it was about it that appealed to me so much, It's soft and somber, a little gray.. not my usual deep and rustic choice, but  recently it hit me.... Nanas Kitchen. The old house had an old country  kitchen, in fact it it still had a pump in the kitchen sink. I remember it so clearly. There was a Large tin panel behind the Big old woodstove,( It had hooks to dry  our mitts and hats in the Winter) the remaining walls were covered in a  tile like wall paper sporting little nosegays of Pale Yellow flowers in the center of each tile. The cabinets were Green.....like Wasabi green.

Now how can a person remember the colour of Cabinets that were replaced some 40+ years ago.. well I have some very strong and very happy memories that revolve around those old cabinets. Like Pink , Nana and Mr Bubble... Wasabi Green reminds me very strongly of my Poppa and Hide n Seek..

   Gumpy... as we called him when we were small , was a large man by any standard, but to my small 6yr old frame he was a giant. He had a booming laugh that rumbled to halt instead of stopping abruptly. He laughed with his whole body! Now, Gumpy would spend hours entertaining us kids and of course a favorite game of ours was Hide n Seek. The old house was a rabbit warren of nooks and closets, knee walls and attics, coal bins in the cellar and my favorite.. The Flour Bins in the Kitchen.
   The Old house had been built prior to the Great Depression and still sported many unique features of the period. The Flour bins were cabinets that canted down, tin lined and  deep and wide enough to hold over 100lbs of flour each, and there was at least One full at any given time, and a scant amount in the bottom of the other( a perfect hiding place). Gumpy knew very well that we loved this spot, and even though he would take the brunt of Nana's ire over the Mess we made getting in and out of the bins, not to mention the flour we tracked around the house. He would still rumble with laughter over the squeals of his two grand daughters as we ran for HOME Free!! Funny now that I think about it...... he could NEVER find us when we hid there.

Years later Nana had the Kitchen remodeled and updated, and the old cabinets were moved down to the cellar, along with the Hand pump and the woodstove. The Stove never burned wood again, the Pump ended up in Nanas flowerbeds and the flour bins.....never saw another game of hide and seek, But the last time I saw them.... they were still Wasabi Green.