A Spring Celebration

There are dark skies here this morning.  Looks like rain will be headed our way.  Our plum tree with its blossoms of white looks especially beautiful against the dark background.  It's a sad kind of tree with it's gnarled branches and our makeshift support system trying to hold it up.  Each year we think it might be its last but surprisingly each spring it returns to life and we exhale a sigh of relief.  It lost its mate a couple of years ago and there still is a gap in the yard because of it.

I took this picture of it this morning but it really didn't capture what I was seeing. Beautiful tiny white blossoms against a blue gray sky.

So I took this one closer up. You can see the cluster of blossoms. So Pretty!

A little closer and you notice the slender yellow stamens.  

Little bursts of yellow surrounding the white blooms.

Upon closer inspection it's revealed that the stamen stems are white and it's only the tips that are yellow.

It's like a natural display of fireworks.  The tree is celebrating another spring.

In the last year I have made a conscious effort to pay more attention to the details.  Not the kind that I relentlessly try to organize on my lists. Those types of details actually require less of my attention.  No, I mean the kind of details that I can so easily pass. The little things. Details of nature. Flowers, birds, leaves on a tree, rocks, shells or a fallen branch.  Sometimes I have to remind myself to do this.  It's easy for me to get distracted with other things.  As I get outside with my new camera it has opened up an undiscovered world - even in my own backyard. Learning to use all the settings and buttons has made me stop and look and stop and look even more.

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 No dance competitions or major driving for us this weekend.  This is good as I have been nursing a bout of sciatica in the last week and a half.  I was feeling pretty good by Wednesday until I started to do some  housework.  Why did I feel it was necessary that day to clean the leather sofa in the family room?  Oh well, I have learned that I just need to take care of it, rest it, ice it, gently walk and stretch it.  It's feeling pretty good today so I'm optimistic I'm headed in the right direction.

Have a good weekend friends!