Spring - North Florida

A brief note while I have a few minutes. These days it seems the time just slips by while I either head in one of 17 different directions or just spin in circles. You'd think by this point in one's life it would be time to slow down a bit -- not speed up. But the RPMs keep increasing...

At any rate, I did manage to slow down enough last week to shoot this in the backyard...
This Magnolia Grandiflora blossom is from a tree that I planted at the rear of our property in 1990. It was the last remaining crooked little sapling at a parking lot flowering tree sale. Like Charley Brown's crummy little Christmas tree, no one else cared to take this one home -- scrawny and shaped like a J. We've watched  her grow for 18 years now -- to a height of well over 40 feet. Her gifts back to us are the annual celebrations of late spring's transition to more summer-like warmth. She still angles out of the ground at about 20 degrees, then heads strait for the sky -- the disability of her youth now an attactive platform to be climbed by my grandson. Just goes to show you -- you never know.

The image below is a small blossom in my sister-in-law's side yard in Winter Park, Florida, near Orlando. No idea what it is -- but it sure is pretty.
Welcome to spring... With Memorial Day weekend just a few days away, the heat of the Florida summer is about to be upon us.