The days seem to rest on the cusp of late spring, with whiffs of summer in broad green leaves and enveloping warmth.  Our azaleas are blooming now.  The white variety is so fragrant and lovely that I had to make a bouquet with just a ball of the abundant flowers.

The magenta ones are beautiful as well.  I love the double ruff on these flowers.  Some of the annoying weeds are blooming, so I grabbed a few to complement the dark, heavy magenta.

A few weeks ago, I was walking in a section of unmowed lawn at the nearby elementary school. I noticed a popping, snapping sound every time I moved, but couldn’t figure out what it was since the light was going at the time.  As I was picking the flowers today, I checked to see if a certain weed was difficult to pull up or not (it was a new addition of our weed selection, so I wasn’t sure if it would come out easy of be a pain to dig out).  As I brushed the plant, I heard the popping sound, and noticed some odd curls by the plants.  It turns out, the seedpods were in the process of forming, and that a light touch will cause half of the seedpod to curl tightly (hence the little faded green curls) and fall off, sounding a snap as the little seeds all scatter.  Thankfully, it was okay that deducing this required setting off a great many seedpods, as a light tug gets these guys out.  And their flowers are pretty and welcome in really, really early spring.

This morning, as our bus passed the lake by the library, the sun had little strength and came glinting dimly upon the waking world through the branches and leaves.  Mist was rising off the lake in plumes, diffusing the early light.  The lake was utterly still, with a eternal quality to it.  A single man rowed an old-fashioned row-boat from one bank, gently stirring the water.  The scene could have been from any time in the history of the continent’s people.