I've gone through colour phases in my life - like boys, they've been worn and discarded, admired and tossed. Okay so I better stop with that metaphor lest I offend anyone, but what I'm trying to say was that I was one a red girl. Red mini skirt. Red scarf. Red plates and bowls. Red saucepans. But I think red's a young person's colour, though @lizelle would disagree with her gorgeous splashes of red in her home.

Once you start looking for red though, you find it even if you think you don't use it in your home decor colour scheme at all, and even if you've been trying to avoid it because it's kinda garish and bold and loud. My home is warm oranges and yellows and cooler deep greens. I have a feature orange wall (that I'm just about fed up with) and green kitchen cupboard doors. Red? Nah.

Except, there's red accents. LIttle splashes of red that complement the warm sunniness of oranges and yellows. Like this old woolen blanket. We got it from an op shop (a charity shop in Australia) in the 'dog blanket' box for $2. There's one barely noticeable hole. We call it 'tomato sauce'. As in, I'm cold, where's Tomato Sauce? It makes sense to us anyway. Don't you name your blankets? We have Mustard and Tulip and Bluey too. It gets cold in Victoria, Australia, in the winter.

Then there's this red fruit bowl that my Aunty got me one Christmas years ago. I loved it at the time - she knew I liked red and spirals. Though I've grown out of the colour, I like to bring this bowl out at Christmas, though it's currently storing lemons.

On my bookshelf too there's red spines - one on Iyengar's yoga, though it's nearly faded to pink now, and another Ottolenghi cookbook. Once I sorted my entire bookshelf into colours. Don't worry, I changed it back. That's crazy behaviour. I selected 'Radiance Sutras' for this photo challenge. They are beautiful meditations on yogic principles. It's a lovely one to dip in and out of and reflect.

The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is one of the early teachings on yoga and meditation. The name, loosely translated, means “the terror and joy of realizing oneness with the Soul.” I say it is little because it is only about three thousand words in the original Sanskrit, perhaps 40 minutes of chanting. It is astonishing that in so few words it describes the essence of many of the world’s meditation techniques. I call it The Radiance Sutras because it is so luminous. - The Radiance Sutras: The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra - Lorin Roche

vayu dvayasya samghattat
antah va bahih antatah
yogic samatva vijnana
samudgamana bhajanam
Pou one breath into the other,
Out-breath into the in-breath
Into the out-breath.
In the harmony of this fusion
Where one rhythm turns into the other,
Awaken into equilibrium.
Tend to breath in this way,
Claim the power
Of oneness with the Self.

The next thing is my moroccan floor runner. I wouldn't have said it was red, but you be the judge of that. But it's just the accents of red that are vibing, as I said earlier - little splashes about the place that can't really be ignored.

Then there's a little red stone ladybird in the soil of my fiddle leaf fig, a splash of red chillis in a Moroccan souk on a postcard leaning on the bookshelf, a red amanita mushroom print on the wall, the comb of my chickens. Yeah, you can't discard or avoid red. It's gonna find you somehow.

This post was written in response to the Hive Photo Essay challenge on Red. It's quite a fun activity - you can join in too if you get it done by August 1.

With Love,

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