Last Day of Freedom

Tomorrow we return to school after an all-too-short break. Short as it was, though, we're going back in a world that seems entirely new. Spring flowers blooming, colors bright and subtle dotting the landscape. Most larger trees are still bare-branched, but shrubs and smaller trees, like crab apples and willows, are tinged with the green of small leaves, and when you look across fields, there's a green haze in the hedgerows... hardly a color at all. An aura. A message whispered in the wind... "It won't be long now..."

Here's what's popped up most recently:

Spring beauties, with their pale striped petals.

The daily bloodroot update.

Trout lily leaves.

Anenomes (these ones Canada) are among the plants that look like balls of green low to the ground. Others, not pictured, include Virginia waterleaf, Jacob's ladder, golden Alexander...
And here, marsh marigold buds (in case I forget to check them when they actually bloom).