Blooming Love

Love is in the air, my friends. As I staggered around the farm this afternoon, drunk from the yellow sunshine and the heady smell of plum blossoms on the evening breeze, I managed to grab a few macro shots of the flowers' best advertising efforts.

The blossoms on our plum hedge smell heavenly.

Around our plum hedge, bees, weighed down by saddlebags of orange pollen, droned about their business, mostly oblivious to the rest of the world. How I envy them. To know your purpose in life and to follow it, no matter what. How completely liberating that must be! Or bee.

Daffodil

Daffodils of every description are found around our farm yard. Some we inherited from the owners immediately previous to us. Others are very old daffodils that have been blooming here, around the old farm house site, for half a century. Some are ancestral daffodils that we dig up from our old family farm site, near where I-77 crosses the Ohio River.

Bleeding heart, nodding under the weight of its blossoms.

The bleeding heart is already advertising itself to our yet-to-arrive hummingbirds. They should be here tomorrow, according to our 14 years of spring nature notes.

Yesterday evening I heard the dee-deeeee! of a newly arrived broad-winged hawk over our orchard. After I was done appreciating him, I looked down and took this image of one of the thousands of dandelions in our yard.

I love the sunny yellow of the dandelions on the deep-lime-green spring lawn.

Back at the plum a sphinx moth (sometimes called a hummingbird moth) nectared on the plum blossoms.

Redbud blooms throughout our woods, looking like dark twigs wrapped in magenta crepe paper.

The humble violet winks at me coyly amid the grass and clover leaves.

Spring beauties. Such a perfect name for a sweet, tiny spring flower.