Looking for Spring
April 3, 2022
Took the camera out for a spin yesterday, looking for spring in my neighborhood. The pickings were slim.
1 No spring in the groundskeeping yard, but at least some color.
2 I can’t say that this slice of a dumpster wall is springlike either, but it, too, showed some color.
3 An upturned old sled doing duty as a frost protector in a community-garden plot offered less color.
4 No color here, but sunlight enhanced some scrap plastic at a construction site.
5 Blue sky was not hovering above the Buttonbush Vernal Pool when I took this photo, so it did not reflect in the water.
6 The peek-a-boo clouds let in a little blue sky in a bit later.
7 The blue held while I photographed a pile-up of last year’s cattails in the pool, but the look of spring was evasive.
8 Finally! The good old willow tree at Meadow Pond was beginning to strut its stuff.
9 Skies were beginning to cloud over again, but this red-winged blackbird was happy about something—maybe the spring it knows will come.
Romancing Reality 
You found a bit more color than we have here, but little green shoots are starting to pop their heads up. Still great finds!
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April 3, 2022 at 8:46 PM
Thank you, Mark. I saw little green shoots here, too. But getting anything resembling an interesting photograph would have meant lying on my belly in the dirt or mud, I think. Somehow I wasn’t up to that.
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April 3, 2022 at 8:53 PM
That’s a good twirly swirly conglomerate of curves in your opening picture. The complexity in #7 is a worthy counterpart. If you hadn’t identified #2 as a dumpster, I think people (other than your regular readers) would be hard pressed to identify the subject. Does buttonbush really grow alongside the pool in #5?
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April 3, 2022 at 10:19 PM
Thanks for commenting, Steve. I’m told that buttonbush does grow there, but I don’t know how to identify it. Guess I should find out.
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April 4, 2022 at 4:23 PM
Here are some pictures of it in various phases:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/?s=buttonbush
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April 4, 2022 at 4:59 PM
Oh, yeah! I even photographed the flower last year! Thanks, Steve.
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April 4, 2022 at 9:28 PM
Me too! I’m such a sap for willow trees. This is nice, Linda!
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April 4, 2022 at 2:31 PM
Willows are graceful, aren’t they. Thanks, Ken.
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April 4, 2022 at 4:25 PM
Uhhhhhh. I just got it, half a day later. Sap. Trees. I’m a bit slow.
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April 4, 2022 at 9:32 PM
#3 (Thanks to your manipulation), looked as if our rocket ship was approaching orbit around a planet. Home?
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April 6, 2022 at 8:13 AM
Okay, I can see that, Kathy. Thanks for commenting.
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April 6, 2022 at 2:04 PM
Some of the spring you found was the springyness of your mind – open and playful. The movement from image to image is nice…I love the black and white reflection. You know, cattails take their time! They’re not doing anything visible here yet, either, though we have lots of green in the trees. I’m happy to see the willow is getting color – by now it must have much more. And the Red-winged blackbird, who could argue with that sign of spring?! 🙂
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April 18, 2022 at 8:50 PM
Thank you, Lynn. The black and white reflection is actually a color photograph. 😉 I walked past that willow today and noticed that the leaves weren’t much further along than in this photo. That may be because we’ve had a bout of colder days, even snow. Other birds are back now, too, including goldfinches and bluejays. Someday spring will be here altogether.
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April 20, 2022 at 8:30 PM