The Coming of My Favorite Season

Ah, spring is finally here! For me, spring is the season of hope. The season of potential. Little green buds emerge from the ground, and weeks later, grow into the first flowers of the year. The landscape is still mostly brown and gray of the winter groundcover. Yet these first flowers inspire hope.

It reminds me of looking at my babies when they were new to this world. They were a bundle of potential -- what would they become? What would they be like?

So, too with the first buds of spring: what wonderful flowers will bloom? And what will this new year be for all of us? Here is a sampling showing the coming of spring here in the city. (Some other photos are included in my Other Thoughts blog: "Almost Spring!" and "A Beautiful Day in March.")

Below left: The happy faces of my daffodils blooming in the sunshine of a warm 1st day of spring. Below right: some crocuses blooming in the yard next door.

Below: My jonquils (march flowers) a few days before they bloomed.


Below (4 photos): Sampling of crocuses popping up all over Cambridge.





Below: The buds in the trees foretell leafing out in April.


Below: After 4 days of warm weather, the yellow forsythia blooms are showing. We call this lot the "forest." In the city, even a 1/2 acre that is not developed is like a 100-acre forest to us urbanites.


Below: The warm weather brings every one out from their winter hibernation. Left: The first day of spring and temperature is in the 70s (over 20 deg C) and the banks of the Charles are littered with sunbathers. Note the leafless trees. Right: Another sign of spring: music in the park! On my lunch stroll through Boston's Public Garden, a jazz trio is playing.

Below: On a warm day in March brings out a couple of rowers (see lower left) on the Charles River where Harvard University lines both banks.

Below: A warm last day of winter and I'm riding my bike home from work when I stopped along the Charles River Esplanade to get a backlit photograph of a footbridge. (My favorite picture of this footbridge is bathed in the pink light of sunset -- see my post "Sunset Along the Charles River")

Below: I came home late to find my jonquils blooming. Here is a flash lit night photo of them.

Sugar Snow

The other day we got just a dusing of snow, something I call sugar snow. It reminds me of the texture of confectionary sugar dusted on a pastry.

While the region from New York to Virginia seemed be getting pelted with one big storm after, way up here in the Boston area, we got rain, rain, and more rain. No shoveling, no slipping on ice, but no snow days off either. So, when we got this little bit of snow this week, I captured a few views of the sugar dusting of Boston Common.