As warm spring days continue, the grass is growing, the trees are leafing out, more flowers are blooming (including all my dandelions) and now the apple blossoms are beginning to open up adding a different white than the snow from winter.
Apple Blossoms Showing
Springtime brings love in the air (and on the ground) with birds singing mating songs and critter pairs chasing each other around the yard like chipmunks and squirrels. Even the cottontails were romping and this one needed a rest break from the chase.
Taking a Break
Mothers may have been treated to breakfast in bed, a special dinner, gifts or flowers on this Mother’s Day. The special flowers I gave my mother are ‘very rare and hard to find’ and I have to hunt high and low on my lawn to find these ‘pretty’ yellow flowers.
Pretty Yellow Flowers
The air is filled with sounds of singing birds, especially the males trying to get noticed by the females. The cardinals are around all winter but his voice is heard above all the returning birds as he sits way up in the trees.
Singing Cardinal
The Yellow Trout Lily might not be as noticeable as Marsh Marigolds, they are interesting find since it doesn’t flower for the first four to seven years. I have a lot of single leaf trout lilies but only a few paired leaves which have the flowers. The lily colonies can be up to 300 years old, although I doubt mine are that old, but only about a half of a percent will have the double leaves and blossom.
Long Wait to Bloom
The goldfinches have regain their summertime bright yellow which helps to spot them in the trees just as the yellow from the marsh marigold stand out against the ground that attracts the returning butterflies to the blossoms.
Yellow in the Marsh
The bird feeder was filled with a range of colors with the blue Indigo Bunting, yellow Goldfinches, red Cardinal, orange Baltimore Orioles, and the red, white and black of the Rose Breasted Grosbeaks. Sometimes there isn’t room at the feeders, especially when my chipmunks keep raiding the jelly feeder and the squirrels trying to get the sunflower seeds. There is even a fight at the bird houses as this bird house had a tree swallow claiming it. The next day a wren was carrying sticks into the house but the following day house sparrows were sitting on it. I guess I might have to build a few more bird houses.
Claiming Bird House
Normally I don’t see these Wood Anemones at the same time as the white colored bloodroots so the woods have an extra white layer with this weird shortened spring season. But there are a mixture of other flowers adding the blues, yellows, purple, brown and green colors too.
More White in the Woods
With the temperature in the 80s today, it is hard to believe that snow was still on the ground last Monday but already my neighbor mowed his lawn in less than a week later. I did see a lot of white in the woods today between the bloodroots and the wood anemones, which is more pleasurable white to see than snow.
Bloodroot White
There was still snow just six days ago but it seems like the weather is skipping over spring as some of the spring wildflowers are done blooming in that short time. And the last of the birds have returned with the arrival of the hummingbirds and house wrens. And the wrens are busy making their nest as soon as they arrived back yesterday.
Gathering Sticks
Watch the busy wren gather sticks to build her nest.
https://youtu.be/wODg94mFEA8&w=640&h=430&rel=0