
These little seed heads in my garden keep calling me back to look at them and I like observing their changes as they advance through the seasons and work their way out of the snow. Somehow they still hold a whisper of the faded colours of summer.
Spring is in no hurry, really, but under the trees there are finally circles of earth, damp and tarnished from the winter. These hopeful patches might hold a gentle robin or a few starlings jabbing hungrily at the ground, and today for the first time I am hearing the lovely lilt of a red-winged blackbird. We are grateful for any bits of spring that we find even if it is simply the incremental folding back of the snow or a few pussy willows breaking through their skins.

Below: The first pussy willows, a couple of weeks old now…
© Karen McRae, 2014