A Spring Walk in February?

Another post already!!  Today was finally a beautifully sunny Spring-like day…. in February?? Not normal for us here in NE PA, but it was a nice one today.  The temp. got up to 50 or more so I decided to take a little walk through a couple gardens with the camera.

I mostly used the macro lens today  and this was the first thing I found!  I had some papers to burn, so I took them to the brush pile that is still in the yard from the creation of the Bird Sanctuary garden last Fall, to try to burn a  bit more of the pile… Little by little the pile is getting smaller.  I started my walk by checking all the new baby trees and shrubs I planted just a couple months ago. I was afraid the deer had gotten all the Witch Hazel buds, but when I looked really close, I found a few tiny buds beginning to unfurl petals…. What a treat!  I love the fuzzy texture of the buds and bark.

I walked through the Lilac Garden and amazingly got a fairly clear shot of a Lilac bud. With my shaky hands and a bit of a breeze that was starting, I was surprised to get it this clear…..

Just below the Lilacs, is the Variegated Juniper that I can see from my studio window… Right now the tips of the branches are a bright yellow. They will fade to creamy white in summer and then green as they age. The photo above shows an area not much over an inch wide…. I got really close with this…

Usually this time of year, most of the perennials are hiding underground or under a blanket of snow… not this winter, at least not yet… This Iris almost looks like it has some new growth….

There is definitely a lack of flowers this time of year, but there is a bit of color if you look really close…  this almost ferny looking fungus is on some old logs from the dead Catalpa tree that are still around.

There is a nice crop of this pretty shelf fungi on another log I found. You can even see a little of the flatter kind on the bark if you look close.

This photo above shows another grouping of the shelf fungi… Some of the stripes in it look nearly blue… These were also pretty small… the largest in this group was around 1 inch across…. Loving the macro lens!

These little guys starting to peek out were a real surprise! The Winter Aconites have been blooming in March most years, and last Spring they didn’t even show anything until the end of March…. This is only February 6, and they are already beginning to show peeks of  color!

The Aconites are growing next to a stone wall and a set of old stone steps. I sat down and took  a closer look at some of what was growing on the rocks… The photo above shows a number of different varieties of fungi.

This little clump of moss is just over an inch in diameter. Here is a really close look at it.

This photo shows the  whole clump of the moss along with some groups of various fungi… You have to get really close to things to see much pretty color this time of year.

This apple was sitting in the fruit bowl and the light was shining on it just right for this closeup….

The African Violet in the kitchen window is still blooming, too… Here is just part of one of the flowers…I love this shade of pink.

It was nice to get out into the gardens again, even if there isn’t too much going on right now. There are some little bitty treasures to be found if one looks close enough.