Sure signs of spring

Although, as I mentioned before, it's a little early for these parts, it does appear that spring is slowly coming to our little neck of the woods. For the last few weeks, you can see red showing up everywhere. I know, red is not the colour that immediately jumps to mind when one thinks "spring", but it really should be. The forest certainly thinks it should be, anyway. :) You can see everywhere, where during the winter, there was only grey, red start to creep into the outermost branches of trees and perennial weeds, as the sap starts to flow into them once again. It's really quite something, I had never noticed that before, but it seems to be everywhere I look!

And now today, the very first flowers of the year have bloomed! I don't know what they're called, they're similar to a dandelion, but they're not. [Edit: Asked Dave's mom, and she told me they're Coltsfoot. Holy Moley, I never put it together that these little flowers in the spring and those big wonkin' kinda shield shaped leaves later on in the summer were the same plant!!] And look who's taking advantage of the flowers already! Mr. Bee is having a good time getting his wings stretched out & getting back into pollen-collecting shape.


And while I was underneath the tree looking at the flowers, little black-capped chickadees were eating birdseed in the maple tree above me! You can see more red there, too, as the buds on a maple tree are red, and starting to swell up a bit.

Yay! It was a lovely time out there, I did a bit more work on bordering the garden, and getting rid of some rocks. If I just work on it a little bit every day (or at least, every not-rainy day), I'll have it ship-shape by planting time. :)