Brian Byrd's Photo Blog — Backyard Blossoms on the First Day of Spring

On this first day of spring — I always feel like I should use a capital S, Spring, even though it is not proper English — I glanced out a window at the back of my house and noticed the first white blossoms on my neighbor’s tree, just on the other side of the fence which separates our properties.

In this first image, I love the contrast between the four different types of trees. One already has bright green leaves. The trees in the background are mostly bare, with only a hint of the green foliage to come. Directly in front of the burgundy-colored tree is a smaller, bare tree with only snow-white blossoms visible. The variety of nature is amazing and captivating!

The white-blossomed tree is the same one which I photographed a month later, last year — what a huge difference one month makes! The brightness and purity of these white blossoms sure catch the eye — especially when viewed against the dark burgundy leaves of the tree behind it.

The second photo is a telephoto zoom picture which enables you to admire and appreciate the delicate textures of each individual blossom. Both of these pictures have been added to the Homemade Images 2015 album. As usual, you can click on each image here to see the larger version.

To celebrate this day, I leave you with a quote from George MacDonald’s novel Alec Forbes of Howglen:

He [God] was now leading on the blessed season of spring, when the earth would be almost heaven enough to those who had passed through the fierceness of the winter. Even now, the winter, old and weary, was halting away before the sweet approaches of the spring — a symbol of that eternal spring before whose slow footsteps Death itself, “the winter of our discontent,” shall vanish. Death alone can die everlastingly.