Not taking the ordinary for granted

I have a favorite chair in my house that is next to a window with a great view of a sloping hill and many trees.  When the angle of the sun and time of year are just right, you can look through this tunnel of trees and see a brightly lit hillside off in the distance.  Most of the time this is an ordinary, every day view for me but, once in a while, it is spectacular.

With the sun shining on this distant spot, the trees are a brilliant lime green and the rocks and tree trunks have a rich, rusty orange color.  Seen through the flat browns and olive greens in the shadowed woods in the foreground, this distant sunny spot really catches your eye.  Add in a couple of trees that are silhouetted on the edge of a ridge and I started thinking about quilt possibilities......

The first step for me is the thumbnail sketch.  I was thinking of a dark monochromatic palette with a small touch of color for that distant hillside I could see.  With all that dark color, though, I need to be careful that it's not too boring, that there would still be some visual interest within the darker areas.

So I sketched and sketched, thinking of tree placements, where to put that spot of color and whether the piece should have a vertical or horizontal orientation.  And how big should it be?

And, of course, what fabrics and colors should I use?  I pulled these from my stash to look at while I sketched and thought.  And I'm still thinking about which is best - maybe one of the last two sketches.