Look! A Flower!

Knitting, yeah, my knitting -- oh, look a flower!

The last of the purple crocuses, slightly color-corrected so they don't look so blue.

And then, since I was outside, I ended up wandering off and going for a walk to the south end of the property, where I found the trout lily leaves were starting to come up all over the path.
Can you see them? All those little speckled leaving popping up through the moss and the bare soil?

No?

Last year when they were coming up, I was still struggling with Mr. Snapshot, the camera with the "close-up" focus distance of 30 inches.

I don't know about you, but I don't consider arm's-reach to be the same as close-up. This year I am still marvelling at how close I can get my Fuji (FinePix S700).

This close. Close enough to show the brown speckles that give a trout lily its name.

Almost close enough to show the thick layer of clear cells on top of the leaf that let the color show through and change like those cards that you move from side to side and the fish jumps! Or the kitten bats its eyelashes!

[Sorry, got a little distracted there. I just went off to Google and spent ten minutes learning that those things are called "lenticular lens cards," reading patents, and looking at manufacturer websites with animated gifs of flowers growing and text expanding. I'm back.]


Next we have the obligatory daffodil close-up:
Did I mention I love how I can almost climb inside the flowers with this camera?

I keep hoping if I take a picture of enough violets at one time, you'll be able to smell them. But it doesn't seem to work that way.

I got right down on my elbows in the sun-warmed violets to take this one.

In the background and out of focus at top right you can just see a line of daffodils near the foundation of the old barn. That's my strategy for cleaning up the trash that frost-heaves out of the ground every spring: I plant flowers there, and as I weed a little, I clean up a little and put whatever came up this year in a trash bucket. Bits of glass and plastic and rusty metal, very old crescent wrenches, polyester clothing, once including a whole pair of pants.

That's old farm property for you. What comes up in the spring is not all flowery and sweet-smelling. But I think it would be a little mean to leave you with that thought, so instead I'll leave you with this:

Scented violets, purple ones and white ones. Mmmm, spring!