Those poor male goldfinches…they are right in the middle of changing over from their winter coats to their springs ones and, lord help me, most of them look hysterical.
They’ve been lighting up the feeders this weekend and I was beginning to wonder where all the females were when I suddenly realized they had their ‘plain jane’ coats on and were still hiding out under cover.
I remember the first time I realized what a lilac bush smelled like. I was around nine years old and playing baseball in a friend’s backyard with all the local kids. I was at home plate (a.k.a. a large rock) getting ready to take my first at bat. I kept getting distracted by the most intoxicating smell and finally had to turn around and ask someone “What IS that?”
“It’s the lilac bush,” my friend said, pointing directly behind me. I was forever changed. I didn’t realize, up until that point in life, that anything could smell that intoxicating.
Now I have a house of my own and one of the first things I did was ask my mom to buy me a lilac bush. We went to a local nursery and picked one out and I spent the next couple of years waiting for it to grow and reach maturity. Last year would have been the first year of rampant blossoms but right before the little buds opened, we got a late snow and the entire bush dropped its buds. I was almost suicidal…
We are currently on the cusp of lilac season and I simply cannot wait. I check the buds daily to see how they are progressing along, wishful that I’ll wake up in a few more mornings and the entire bush will be lit up with that smell that takes me back to the spring time of my youth.
Round Two with the daffodils. This time, instead of going for such a literal look, I tried a few additional editing tricks - things like desaturation, gaussian blur, diffused glow and dragging the shutter. Mmm, mmm, but I like the results.
They are generally the first flowers to bloom in my yard each spring. They are the color of liquid sunshine and seem to have an abundance of personality as their heads flop and fly in the March breezes. They are daffodils (or jonquils, if you prefer) and they are one of my favorite flowers.
