The True Sign Of Spring

I've been waiting for this moment for a long time now; well, at least since it got warm around here anyway. I've been watching for the leaf buds to come out on the trees, but I gotta say they weren't in any hurry at all.

Last year we had full leaves on the trees at the end of February. Now it's already May, and we're just seeing the first signs of life on these trees. Isn't it interesting how much things vary from year to year?

Can you imagine how proud I must look sitting here at my computer sharing these out of focus pictures with you? Sitting here with a big wide smile on my face. Yup.

I even used manual focus to try to get these to come out okay, but that didn't seem to help at all. These buds were the ones behind the buds I was pointing the camera at. You don't want to see those. Trust me, this is the best I got.

With the combination of my camera not seeing the right thing and my eyes not being quite good enough to see through the view screen, I'm not too good at taking pictures of small things very often.

Still, these were the best I got, and they are the first buds of the year for me. I'm posting them for that reason alone. Yup, I'm proud of them.

Now you know why I don't take pictures of plants very often. They just don't hold still as long as animals do, at least not for me. I say it must be the camera. Oh sure, other people get better results with the same equipment, but I still say it's all the camera's fault.

And besides, the pictures aren't what's important with my posts anyway. It's the stories. The pictures are just here to illustrate my strange little stories. Sure, I like the pictures, but I like the stories even more. Words are how we communicate. Anybody can point and shoot, but words are how we express our creativity.

I love being a storyteller. The stories don't have to be fine art. All they have to do is give a bit of entertainment and then be forgotten. The words will usually be quickly lost, but the feelings they give will linger throughout the day.

And even with all of the warm weather, spring wasn't quite really here. The plants coming back to life are the first true signs of spring. This is what I'll remember for the rest of the year, the first day I saw green on the trees.