Flower Forecast

My camera is still out of commission, so please excuse the poor quality of these photographs.

It finally feels like spring here in the Midwest. Here's the flower forecast for the first week of May, but first, a view of some tiny ginkgo leaves making their appearance. Ginkgoes are special because they've been around much longer than the human race, and they're still going strong.

Now onto the actual flowers. These brittle, brown flowers are obviously from last season, but they've help up remarkably well, especially considering all the heavy snows we got this past winter.

All I can really say about these flowers is that you have to smell them to believe them.

This appears to be some kind of holly bush, but it has really sweet yellow flowers. Maybe I've just never noticed holly flowers before, but these blooms give me a new outlook on holly.

We now present a commercial intermission from all the flowers to highlight some foliage. These trees win my vote for best spring foliage.

Here are a few close-ups to demonstrate why.

Now back to the flower forecast. These are my favorite blooms of the day because of the spotlessness of their white color and their spikiness.

What kinds of flowers have you been seeing? What's your favorite spring foliage?

Next post: more May madness.

Campus Hodge Podge

I'm still mourning the possible loss of my camera (so excuse the phone pictures), but that isn't stopping me from photographing the best in plants from around campus! Today I have a particularly eclectic collection to show off. The weather is super nice (as in, sweaty nice), so things are starting to liven up in the realm of flora.

The first plants I noticed were these white-flowering bushes. I'm not sure what kind of bushes these are, but they smell amazing. That's one of the great things about plants: they please at least four of the five senses, if you don't count the sound of tree limbs trembling in the wind, which I do.

Also, the flowers on these bushes are adorable. So sweet and innocent-looking.

Next I saw what I believe was a flowering Japanese maple outside my dorm. I couldn't get close enough to the foliage and flowers from the ground, so I took these shots from the inside of a window.

I think the image of the leaves coming out over the dangling flowers is a great one for this time of year. I've seen it in many kinds of trees around town.

This tulip bed was outside the clinic. The clinic's pretty close to the hospital, which has the really impressive tulip display. They have hot pinks, reds, purples, oranges--you name it, basically. This bed only had red and yellow, but tulips are adamant about being upbeat no matter their color.

Oh hi, thumb!

There were only two red tulips in this area, but they were my favorite of the bunch. Here's the better-looking one of them.

What flowers are intriguing you this week? What colors of tulips have you seen?

Next post: a plant list.