The maple tree outside our window has popped and the bees are all over it. I tried to video them, but they are too hard to see. Trust me, they were swarming around those blossoms, just too far away for my camera's resolution.
I have often tracked the progress of the seasons by this tree. I see the buds fountain out and pop in the Spring, watch the leaves unfurl like wings, witness them turning from chartreuse to become a mature, dark green in Summer. In the Fall, they don their fire-colored party clothes before going to the ground in the big dance.
The first Spring after we moved here I was waiting for Karen and the girls to come home and enjoying the yard. I was lying on the bench on our deck looking up through the foliage, enjoying how the light played through the young, translucent leaves. Alone, they were chartreuse but where one or more of them overlapped they became darker and darker shades of green. When the breeze toyed with them, the green-on-green kaleidoscope was fascinating.
I remember thinking how lucky I was to be there at that very moment to enjoy the show and be in my own yard waiting for the family I love to come home. I am constantly counting my blessings, and that day I got to do it in a nice breeze hearing the insects buzzing and the birds chirping. A good day.
The second picture is the pain-in-the-ass robin that defecates all over my side mirror while challenging the imaginary male in my van window. Another annual rite of Spring at our house. (sigh.)
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