washing?

"In the late spring, when the puckers of red poppy blossom are scattered against the green of the season, it can look like so much washing, like mounds of Persian silk and Florentine brocade lightly tossed in heaps."

What does it mean by "it can look like so much washing"?

"Washing" in this context refers to piled-up clothes that are going to be washed. The phrase "like so much (noun)" means that a given amount of one thing looks like a similar amount of another thing (eg, the poppy blossoms look like a similar amount of washing).

Thanks!
I just noticed that the sentence that follows the above-mentioned part is also confusing to me:

"...Each successive rise takes on a new color, indefinably more fervent, an aspect of distance and time stained by the shadows of clouds,..."

What does it mean by "an aspect of distance and time"?

Lazar, would you also call clothes that are being or have just been washed "washing"? I would.

"an aspect of distance and time" ... I'd have to see more of the context to be sure but the impression I get is that the author is describing a journey and that the "distance and time" i.e. the travelling, is making him see things in this way.

what dose this phrase mean ( be caught in the cross fire ) ... and when shall I use it

Washing = laundry to me (although I usually use the latter word) and it can refer to either clean or dirty clothes. They remain "laundry" until they're been hung up or folded and put away, dammit! Throwing clean clothes on the floor doesn't count....


<<"...Each successive rise takes on a new color, indefinably more fervent, an aspect of distance and time stained by the shadows of clouds,..." >>

Lazarakis (where are you from, by the way, if you don't mind divulging that?), there is also a phenomenon known as atmospheric perspective in which things that are farther away become bluer and bluer. That, at least, is is what I am picturing when I read that passage; a series of hills (rises) marching away into the distance, becoming bluer and bluer as they recede toward the horizon, and being altered by the shadows of clouds passing above them as the day wears on.

In quiet, calm anticyclonic weather the hills on the horizon do appear to be a sort of blue colour, especially if there is a hint of mistiness in the atmosphere. It's quite common in this area in the summer when you are on high ground, like on top of Arthur's Seat. The hills of Fife across the Firth often look quite blueish.

Dennis Potter wrote an amazing play called "Blue Remembered Hills" and when I was at uni in Leeds we went to see a production by a local repertory company in Harrogate.

The whole play conjures up that image of blueish hills on the horizon and this adds to the whole ethos of the action which is set in the summer of 1943, in WW2 England...in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. The characters are all children but the crucial factor is that the parts are all played by adults. Having real children play the parts would be ineffective to the entire message of the play.

Like all children they live in a sort of make believe world of childish fantasies, living in their own little secure and cosy world, but it is wartime and their childish fantasy world is cruelly shattered by the harsh reality of the war taking place in the normally peaceful English skies above their heads and the serene beauty of the English countryside.

The innocence and magic of childhood is gradually replaced by the alien and bitter reality of adulthood in a hostile world of war on their own doorstep.

http://s-c-t.members.beeb.net/blueremhills/brh_preview.htm

<<the hills on the horizon do appear to be a sort of blue colour>>

I remember going to see the "Blue Mountains" to the west of Sydney (Aus). This turned out to be something of a misnomer as they were neither blue nor mountains- "green hills" would have been a better description. However, they were named by convicts who thought China was on the other side when they set about escaping.

<<Lazar, would you also call clothes that are being or have just been washed "washing"? I would.>>

Yeah, I should have added that into my original post.

They are kind of bluish, however, and although they're not huge, they are bigger than what you'd refer to as a "hill". Perhaps they should have been called the "Bluish-Green Smallish-Mountains".

They appear blue in the distance because the sunlight scatters blue from the oil in the atmosphere given off by the eucalyptus trees.

To Uriel:
Thanks a lot for your always-very-clear explanation.
I am from Taiwan. Why would you want to know?