Spring: Half Behind, Half to Come

It promises not to be a very creative day in terms of words or pixels, with two meetings scheduled in town, inconveniently early then late in the day, with the hot part of the afternoon left over to mow grass, clean up in the garden and check off a half-dozen things on the honey-do list before the weekend.

I did manage to stop a moment on the way in from tending the (two remaining) chickens this morning as the sun sent shafts of soft lavender light diverging through the sparse branches of the hemlocks dying in earnest now along the east ridge.

The only benefit from the tree species’ loss, the indigo bunting and the scarlet tanager males who called from two spent hemlocks near the barn, both from the uppermost dead branches, which until they rot and fall, will make excellent platforms from which to proclaim territory–the bunting in his doublets, and the tanager in his robin-quality warble so distinctive that at first hearing in May (this year in late April), it marks for me the true coming of spring.

Image: first (and last) in an intended set–glamour shots of first-emergent leaves in the early spring. It just happens too quickly, so this one tulip poplar will wait until next year for company.