Spring is my favorite season because it brings warmth and color to end winter’s cold and gray. The original owner of my house planted a lot of bulbs in a large bed in the middle of my front yard, and the daffodils are always the first to poke out their heads. They have become my annual confirmation of spring’s arrival, and I look for them every day starting about mid-March.
When we went to Tennessee for spring break, I hoped their blossoms would be farther along than ours here in Indiana, and I wasn’t disappointed. These tree flowers had a delicate, sweet scent.
It’s funny how I started paying attention to flowers only after I started to enjoy photography a few years ago. Before that, I didn’t care about them at all, and hardly noticed them. What a shame that it took me until my 40s to appreciate them. But a consequence of getting such a late start is that I have no idea what most of them are called. Your comments on my annual posts about the flowers I photograph along the roadside have helped me identify several flowers, but I still have a long way to go. These red flowers, which were also freshly blossomed in Tennessee, are yet another I can’t name.
I look to photograph the smallest flowers, because I think most people overlook them.
I had never seen anything like this before. I’m not even sure it’s a flower. Maybe it’s a Tennessee thing.
I hoped that when we returned from our trip that Indiana’s spring flowers would have begun to bloom, and I wasn’t disappointed. I don’t know what these little flowers are called, but they come up every year in my front bed.
My grape hyacinths were up. My mother planted these – at least once a year, she visits bearing plants from her own extensive gardens and spends an afternoon digging in my dirt. I’m glad she does it, because I don’t enjoy gardening very much. (But I do love to mow the grass.)
Many of the yards on my street are overrun with violets this year, my yard included.
And of course, the daffodils have opened!
Last spring I toured the neighborhood with my camera, photographing the flowering trees. Check it out.
Beautiful pictures, Jim. Flower 3, I believe is an azalea. Flower 4 is periwinkle. Periwinkle is a hardy ground cover. I have some in the front flower bed. Flower 5 is ? Flower 6 is an anemone or Grecian windflower.
LikeLike
Ooh, periwinkle is a ground cover? I have a huge bed in back where I killed off a wildly overgrown patch of ivy, and I need to replace it with something. I’d love to have it full of little blue blooms in the spring!
LikeLike
And the beauty of periwinkle? They bloom well into the fall!
LikeLike
Very pretty. We still have snow on the ground up here and are expecting some more this weekend. It’s nice to see life springing up in other places. Hopefully, Minnesota will soon follow.
LikeLike
Isn’t it refreshing to see come color after a dreary winter?! I so look forward to my Bleeding Heart to poke through the soil as much as my Hyacinth and Daffy as well. Even the Grape Hyacinths are wonderful!
LikeLike
Some years ago I was in the National Arboratum in D.C. at the start of the spring season. The profusion of flowers , of various hues was amazing, really.
LikeLike
Very nice collection. Never too many flowers.
LikeLike
Beautiful pictures! I love flowers. I love seeing them even more simple because they aren’t blooming where I live. You give me hope that spring WILL come, even to my part of the world. :-)
-FringeGirl
LikeLike
Thanks, everybody! I find it relaxing and almost therapeutic to get on the ground with my camera and photograph flowers!
LikeLike
Jim, these photos are, quite literally, breathtaking. I’ll probably be reluctant to post my flower pictures after seeing your.
The red Tennessee thingie is an azalea. I’ve tried to nurture them here. Can’t do it. I have seen a few around, but not mine.
LikeLike
Oh, post your flower pics anyway. And typos are immediately forgotten here at Down the Road. It’s policy.
LikeLike
yours
LikeLike
These photos are so beautiful. Things (non-prickly, non-deserty things, anyway) don’t grow out here in the desert unless we force them. So thanks for posting these, and Happy Spring!!
LikeLike
Thanks Holly! I’m not sure how I’d cope without my daffodils!
LikeLike
Beautiful colors! We have a bush just like the one shown in the 3rd picture. I tried to figure out what it was, and the closest I got that it might be related to Alstroemeria. Whatever the name, it is lovely to look at!
LikeLike
I have it on high authority it’s an azalea. But I haven’t validated it!
LikeLike
Nice pictures, Jim. We were having spring in Tennessee until a couple days now. Now, it feels like January again.
LikeLike
And so it goes. We’ve had much the same here.
LikeLike