before spring to after
Jun. 30th, 2024 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliA vast flock rises up like smoke, shifting about, and divides, with the larger part soaring over the highway to settle on the trees on the other side, and the smaller sinking back to the trees that they had sprung from.
On the snowy slope, not all trees are leafless. Some are saplings still bearing leaves of yesteryear, still hanging on. Some are white as parchment, some are copper, some are shades of gold between the two, and they are all intermixed so they must be different trees, some bleaching more easily than others.
Birds are calling, and on a stand of leafless trees, perching and now and again flitting from one to another. Except in flight, they look like chubby little shadows of the branches.
A walk about in early spring is more intellectual delight than aesthetic. Here are the daffodil sprouts, there dwarf irises, over there crocuses, and then hyacinth, all green and distinguishable only by shape, and only to the sharp eye. Yet a first flower came to eye: a dandelion growing in a lawn. There were, after careful inspection, also snowdrops blooming in dainty white, but still --dandelions. (Two days later a crocus bud appeared.)
Daffodils in full bloom, when everywhere is sprouts only. It does not look sheltered.
The river engulfs the flood plains, and between the gray sky, the wind ruffling the waters, and the morning light, it looks like snow spreads over them.
A weeping cherry has a handful of branches where pink blooms as opening even as it descends to freezing every night.
Among the crocuses in every shade of purple and the dwarf irises in blue and purple, the scilly are blooming in their true blue. Walking past reveals that the next section of the garden has started to grow past sprouting. Delicate dainty dwarf daffodils are in bloom.
On a garden post where a flower basket does not yet hang, a bird perches. A hawk, but with its fluffy front toward the path, it looks not all at formidable.
Sweet notes draw attention to the window. Outside, on the railing, in the gray rain, a cardinal perched, its back a reddish brown, its beak and head and belly vivid scarlet, but its crest damped down to its head in the wet. Still, it sings.
A scattering of trees are bursting into blossom: pink blossom, and not so fully blown that the purple stems are hidden but commingled with the pink.
Birds in flight. The caw of a crow is rather like the honking of geese, but since the migration of geese is mostly done, a glance reveals crows circling around.
What a palette: the dark bark from the rainy day, the trees all crowned with thickening red as the maples flower, and below stand the saplings still bearing leaves in copper, in white, in shades of yellow inbetween when the winter's sun had bleached only in part.
The flowering maples have thickening red mists about their branches, and abruptly, the shrubs below are shadowed all over with sprightly green. Within days trees are joining the maples with leaves of the same green, or cotton candy bursts of pink blossom, or an intenser pink, or a more delicate shade, or pure white. Tulips ripen from green to vivid brilliance in days after. Feral scilly and viola add blue and violet to the grass, thoroughly studded with dandelion yellow
Cinquefoil starts growing far more early than many other flowers. It fills its spot in the garden with brilliant yellow.
In the forest, green grows. Here and there -- especially there, where the ground sank in hollows or waterways, and the greenery grows thick. Some is skunk cabbages, but other green things love the waters, though it has rained so much that I wonder at the favor.
Lawns have great white clumps of flowers. Sometimes they are close enough that they can be seen as white violets, but other times, it seems off. It is several days before they grow close enough to the street to be seen as pussytoes.
How the spring glows. Sunshine through daffodils or red tulips, making them glow like topaz or ruby. Sunshine through the leafing trees, making them glow like emeralds. Flowering cherries and apples all glowing white, or pink. Most elegant of all, the flowering crab apple, where light shines through the dark green leaves and the dark pink petals, the richest of jewels.
Full spring reigns, with tulips and daffodils nodding under apple trees in white and cherries in ruffled pink. The tree there, it looks like winter killed it -- but no, there are indeed buds on the branches. It is leafing with stately measure.
For the first time, the hills by the highway are green. In patchwork of paler and darker, mostly pale with newness, but all the trees are in leaf.
Dogwoods in bloom, if not white, are all sorts of pink. More pinks than the sunrise. Down to a delicate tinge, up to a hot pink that would not shame a candy store.
The roadside lies in chips of wood and straggling branches where they clear-cut the banks and left the refuse behind, revealing more clearly the stands of wisteria now abloom in drooping purple
Clouds across the sky, all white but for the gaps of sky, thicker up high, with wispier flying below. Over one blue gap, wispy clouds float. It seems to be on a loop; as I glance over, the same arrangement of white wisps is withdrawing from the gap. Over and over.
The drive into the hills shows fewer flowers than common -- perhaps in the gap between the spring plantings and the summer ones. Still, the hills are a lovely patchwork of green.
Forget-me-nots flourish in blue, all over the garden, unlabeled and no doubt reseeding.
Grackles all over. Blue blazing when they tilt their heads or walk into the sunlight.
The gibbous moon hangs in the sky, pearly against the pearly blue sky, which darkens to indigo as the moon brightened, for several nights. Then the still gibbous moon hangs lower, the golden tinged with red, in the pearly blue sky, and though it rises to white against indigo, the full moon is coming.
The rabbit, seeing a walker, creeps along the garden until out of sight, as low to the ground as a cat. Once nibbling in the lawn, it spots the walker, and bounds off, its tail brilliant in the gathering gloom.
A white creature, all but flat, slithers across the road and into the shrubbery on the other side, with its black fur just barely visible on the borders of a white stripe that engulfs its back, and its feet wholly hidden. (A wide berth is still called for.)
The woodchuck eats in the lawn, its nose nearly to the curb, an impervious, stolid fur-covered lump that ignores the car zipping right by it.
The flash of orange reveals the Baltimore oriole perched on a branch. It takes a moment for the rest of the bird, in black, to be clear.
A bird flits about the tree, too small and too yellow to be a goldfinch. There are only a few brown bars on its wings, which, it turns out, is a yellow warbler with an uncommon amount of yellow. Usually there's more brown.
A feral million bells grows in the gravel beneath a deck, brilliantly red.
A motion among the geraniums draws my gaze. A completely black cat, except for pale celadon green eyes, looks back. And continues to look as I walk on. I glance back as my path takes me back on the road, and it's still watching.
The sun shines through the flowers, pure yellow day lilies, and pale yellow coreopsis with its smaller blooms, and they glow.
The hydrogenas are particularly vivid this year, many of them in a deep sky blue. Others are the mingled pink and blue and purple blooms.
The roadsides are flush with fiery tiger lilies and deep pink sweetpeas, both feral and gardened, but when the sunlight gets behind the lilies and turns them a blaze of orange, they are the radiant.
On the snowy slope, not all trees are leafless. Some are saplings still bearing leaves of yesteryear, still hanging on. Some are white as parchment, some are copper, some are shades of gold between the two, and they are all intermixed so they must be different trees, some bleaching more easily than others.
Birds are calling, and on a stand of leafless trees, perching and now and again flitting from one to another. Except in flight, they look like chubby little shadows of the branches.
A walk about in early spring is more intellectual delight than aesthetic. Here are the daffodil sprouts, there dwarf irises, over there crocuses, and then hyacinth, all green and distinguishable only by shape, and only to the sharp eye. Yet a first flower came to eye: a dandelion growing in a lawn. There were, after careful inspection, also snowdrops blooming in dainty white, but still --dandelions. (Two days later a crocus bud appeared.)
Daffodils in full bloom, when everywhere is sprouts only. It does not look sheltered.
The river engulfs the flood plains, and between the gray sky, the wind ruffling the waters, and the morning light, it looks like snow spreads over them.
A weeping cherry has a handful of branches where pink blooms as opening even as it descends to freezing every night.
Among the crocuses in every shade of purple and the dwarf irises in blue and purple, the scilly are blooming in their true blue. Walking past reveals that the next section of the garden has started to grow past sprouting. Delicate dainty dwarf daffodils are in bloom.
On a garden post where a flower basket does not yet hang, a bird perches. A hawk, but with its fluffy front toward the path, it looks not all at formidable.
Sweet notes draw attention to the window. Outside, on the railing, in the gray rain, a cardinal perched, its back a reddish brown, its beak and head and belly vivid scarlet, but its crest damped down to its head in the wet. Still, it sings.
A scattering of trees are bursting into blossom: pink blossom, and not so fully blown that the purple stems are hidden but commingled with the pink.
Birds in flight. The caw of a crow is rather like the honking of geese, but since the migration of geese is mostly done, a glance reveals crows circling around.
What a palette: the dark bark from the rainy day, the trees all crowned with thickening red as the maples flower, and below stand the saplings still bearing leaves in copper, in white, in shades of yellow inbetween when the winter's sun had bleached only in part.
The flowering maples have thickening red mists about their branches, and abruptly, the shrubs below are shadowed all over with sprightly green. Within days trees are joining the maples with leaves of the same green, or cotton candy bursts of pink blossom, or an intenser pink, or a more delicate shade, or pure white. Tulips ripen from green to vivid brilliance in days after. Feral scilly and viola add blue and violet to the grass, thoroughly studded with dandelion yellow
Cinquefoil starts growing far more early than many other flowers. It fills its spot in the garden with brilliant yellow.
In the forest, green grows. Here and there -- especially there, where the ground sank in hollows or waterways, and the greenery grows thick. Some is skunk cabbages, but other green things love the waters, though it has rained so much that I wonder at the favor.
Lawns have great white clumps of flowers. Sometimes they are close enough that they can be seen as white violets, but other times, it seems off. It is several days before they grow close enough to the street to be seen as pussytoes.
How the spring glows. Sunshine through daffodils or red tulips, making them glow like topaz or ruby. Sunshine through the leafing trees, making them glow like emeralds. Flowering cherries and apples all glowing white, or pink. Most elegant of all, the flowering crab apple, where light shines through the dark green leaves and the dark pink petals, the richest of jewels.
Full spring reigns, with tulips and daffodils nodding under apple trees in white and cherries in ruffled pink. The tree there, it looks like winter killed it -- but no, there are indeed buds on the branches. It is leafing with stately measure.
For the first time, the hills by the highway are green. In patchwork of paler and darker, mostly pale with newness, but all the trees are in leaf.
Dogwoods in bloom, if not white, are all sorts of pink. More pinks than the sunrise. Down to a delicate tinge, up to a hot pink that would not shame a candy store.
The roadside lies in chips of wood and straggling branches where they clear-cut the banks and left the refuse behind, revealing more clearly the stands of wisteria now abloom in drooping purple
Clouds across the sky, all white but for the gaps of sky, thicker up high, with wispier flying below. Over one blue gap, wispy clouds float. It seems to be on a loop; as I glance over, the same arrangement of white wisps is withdrawing from the gap. Over and over.
The drive into the hills shows fewer flowers than common -- perhaps in the gap between the spring plantings and the summer ones. Still, the hills are a lovely patchwork of green.
Forget-me-nots flourish in blue, all over the garden, unlabeled and no doubt reseeding.
Grackles all over. Blue blazing when they tilt their heads or walk into the sunlight.
The gibbous moon hangs in the sky, pearly against the pearly blue sky, which darkens to indigo as the moon brightened, for several nights. Then the still gibbous moon hangs lower, the golden tinged with red, in the pearly blue sky, and though it rises to white against indigo, the full moon is coming.
The rabbit, seeing a walker, creeps along the garden until out of sight, as low to the ground as a cat. Once nibbling in the lawn, it spots the walker, and bounds off, its tail brilliant in the gathering gloom.
A white creature, all but flat, slithers across the road and into the shrubbery on the other side, with its black fur just barely visible on the borders of a white stripe that engulfs its back, and its feet wholly hidden. (A wide berth is still called for.)
The woodchuck eats in the lawn, its nose nearly to the curb, an impervious, stolid fur-covered lump that ignores the car zipping right by it.
The flash of orange reveals the Baltimore oriole perched on a branch. It takes a moment for the rest of the bird, in black, to be clear.
A bird flits about the tree, too small and too yellow to be a goldfinch. There are only a few brown bars on its wings, which, it turns out, is a yellow warbler with an uncommon amount of yellow. Usually there's more brown.
A feral million bells grows in the gravel beneath a deck, brilliantly red.
A motion among the geraniums draws my gaze. A completely black cat, except for pale celadon green eyes, looks back. And continues to look as I walk on. I glance back as my path takes me back on the road, and it's still watching.
The sun shines through the flowers, pure yellow day lilies, and pale yellow coreopsis with its smaller blooms, and they glow.
The hydrogenas are particularly vivid this year, many of them in a deep sky blue. Others are the mingled pink and blue and purple blooms.
The roadsides are flush with fiery tiger lilies and deep pink sweetpeas, both feral and gardened, but when the sunlight gets behind the lilies and turns them a blaze of orange, they are the radiant.