Well, after much hand-wringing and consternation ... changing graphic files and changing them back, trying different color combinations, and dealing with a copy/pasted-multi-times typo, I've come to the conclusion that ...
radestock's right.
My menubar's colors are now set.
I realize from my first post, everyone has been talking about the tree, but I've been working on the menubar, which now has a background color of "ocol" and outlined white text. Really, I don't see too much of a color-issue with the tree, because, like Aurora was, the tree will just be "fcol" on "bkcl" like the titlebar.
The real trick for me will be getting the praphics to "flow" from titlebar to tree seemlessly, and getting all the widgets moved around to "better" places ...