Flowers at dawn

Dawn on the last day of March proved true to the adage "In like a lion, out like a lamb" this year. I went to the kitchen to make coffee, and looking out the window I saw the sun hit the first daffodil of the spring. (Click for larger view if you wish.) It seems a bit overexposed, but I selected this one over another snap that was more yellow, because I liked the brilliance where the sunlight hits it.

We have hundreds of daffodils planted, scattered all around the southern end of our land. This is partly just because we like them, but also a result of having seen them blooming in early spring down in southern Illinois and Indiana, when we went on hiking trips there. In many places in the state and national forests where there were once homesteads that are now long gone, you still find the daffodils that have divided and multiplied to form dense mats. These naturalized beds (sometimes 50 feet or more across) still outline buildings and even walkways that are otherwise completely invisible to the eye. Gary was quite taken by this ghostly shadow of things that once were, and has planted more and more daffodils nearly every year since we bought our place.

The weather is springlike too. Slightly hazy, but warm, rising into the 70F region today. As I look out my window at work, I see that the oaks in the park outside have taken on a slightly greenish tinge and look "fuzzy" compared with last week. I'm sure the leaf buds are swelling and greening up, even though oaks are usually the last trees to leaf out in this area.

We've had crocus blooming for almost two weeks now. As usual, the yellow and solid purple varieties opened first, followed only in the last couple of days by the blue and white striped and pure white blossoms. They are all the same species, and it has puzzled me why certain colors would blossom earlier than others, but the pattern is consistent. Here we see a pair of snow white blossoms with intensely yellow centers, the last color to appear.

As I mentioned yesterday, the birds have been busy and noisy. Mid-morning today we were puzzled by what sounded like water dripping. Listening carefully, we tracked it to the bathroom, yet nothing was dripping in there. It was a loud, rhythmic plopping noise, just like large drips falling into a barrel that amplified the sound. Gary even opened up the crawlspace under the house to see if he could hear it down there. When I slid the shower doors aside, it stopped, but only to start up again as soon as we gave up on it and left the room. Finally I opened a window and determined that it was definitely coming from outside. The sound was almost certainly a bird unknown to me, but had hints of a small animal in distress, like a chipmunk calling for its mother or something. Very rhythmic, mostly like water plopping but sometimes with a little breathy squeak on the end. Later I heard it in the garage and would have sworn that the noise maker was inside there, but I don't think it was. A puzzle yet unsolved...