Walt Whitman was born on Long Island, New York, USA.  His longest poem Leaves of Grass was written in a time span of over 30 years of his life. He avoided the term "blades of grass" due to his non-violence stance as a Quaker.  Hempstead Plains is an ecological reserve that conserves a small part of the grasslands that once covered most of Long Island.  I chose this location as the inspiration of Whitman's masterpiece as it is the closest to his birthplace and it gave me a sense of the prairie grasses that he would have encountered on walks he described in biographical sketches.  The palette I used is varied due to the blooms and subtle hues among the wisps of grass.