Decorating with Sunshine

The sun is a living element here. It's palpable. So hot, so close, so bright in winter as well as summer. You feel it, not just as warmth, but as a weight on your skin. Santa Fe sunsets are famous for their outrageous spectacle. Sunshine is a decor addition in our homes.

I watch it decorate my living room in the mornings. It bends and moves to find what it wants to highlight. 

The sun always finds that one plant on the glass coffee table even though the light has to come in on the other side of the house, bend around the dining room table, angle through the glass door fireplace, and swerve over to that one spot on the coffee table.

If I move the plant the sun still finds it.

Morning sun also has to bend around the corner to find my potted lemon tree. Nothing else in the room is lit up, the sun wants only the lemon tree and finds it.

The funny thing is -- both the tabletop plant and the lemon tree are fake. They are plastic. Does the sun know that?

I think the sun just hungers for green things, living plants or not. As the morning brightens, it is only those green plastic plants in my rooms that it shines on.

Or is it the other way around? The plants, imitations that they are, hunger to become real and grab the sunshine to make it so.

I am fascinated by how it is the green things in my rooms that the sun finds. In late afternoon, unimpressed with my Christmas decor on the mantel, the sun sends slants of sunshine to enhance my decorating efforts.

The little evergreen forest on the mantel is fake too, obviously. But the sun lights them up with glee.

Who needs furniture and artwork and fancy baubles when the sun is so good at decorating?