Spittle bugs

Sign of summer...

Flowers of Today

Wild geraniums 

Shooting star 

Foam flowers 

Strawberries and Jack

Shrubs are Singing...

All over, trees and shrubs are flowering... 

Crab apples, whose pink buds turn to white as soon as they flower.

Lilacs, which should be in full bloom just in time for mother's day!

Judd's Viburnum

Nineteen Days After

It's pretty much green now, with a smattering of yellow dandelions!

Sixteen Days After

There is definitely starting to be a green tinge to the prairie -- and everything else... You know, that spring feeling, when you look off into the distance, and everything just seems green?  We're definitely in that time now.  Of course, I've determined that the spot where I've chosen to stand and photograph the prairie is right in front of the blackest spot left... ah, well...

And for good measure, here's a bur oak branch.  I noticed yesterday that even they have a green halo effect as the flowers emerge and leaves start their budburst.  I think of oaks as some of the last simple-leaf leaf-outs, so that's an important observation!  (Still waiting on some of the complex-leaved trees to do anything... my ash -- which we've been treating for years, so it's actually still alive and not succumbed to the borer -- has no leaves yet, nor the locusts outside the window.)