Hints of Spring

Saturday was a beautiful spring day. It was still a little chilly in the normal southern Minnesota wind. I decided to go looking for hints of spring. Sure, I could have found someone's flower garden where tulips are blooming, but I wanted to look in the more subtle places where the human hand has not had as much influence.

So I went out around the (human-created) lake near our apartment. (There are NO natural lakes in this county!) Got in close on some things to see the still tiny signs that are arriving.

Naturally the dandelions are around. Weeds are just plants growing where you don't want them to, so these weren't bothering anyone....

The best early signs of spring are found in the ways the trees bud and leaf out.

Although some of those are still so tiny that you need to get in real close.

Of course some things are just waiting. Will the birds return to this nest? I am not enough of a naturalist to know what type of nest it is and whether they reuse the same nests or not. I actually saw about half a dozen empty nests in a few hundred feet of each other along the shore.



And don't forget that there are still leftovers from last year:



Some you have to really magnify to get their beauty. These too are probably more than leftovers. They are the hints of the future beyond even this spring.



No doubt about it, spring IS here.