Spring Flowers

This little white star is called Spring Beauty. It seems to be very common here and very cute and pretty. Notice the red and black bug on the one flower in the first photo. As with so many spring flowers they are not very tall. So it is a matter of getting way down low to photograph them. I found them mostly in areas that have lots of leaf piles left over from fall. The are mostly white with a hint of pink down the middle of the petal. Spring Beauty is the common name. Another name I found was Claytonia Virginica.

We have lots of wild violets or johnny-jump-ups in our lawn. They are one of my favorite flowers. These don't have the wonderful odor the ones my mom used to raise had. I found this one in a crack in our driveway. I found that when trying to take pictures of these small, low down flowers to be hard to do without getting my shadow in the photo. The best way was to get down on the level of the flower or to take the picture in a shaded area. Yes you can get decent pictures in the shade if you are careful.

See the dew droplet on this one.

 More spring wild flowers or maybe they are just weeds.

This is our Bradford pear tree. I had two of these in New Mexico and was glad to find one in the yard here. Bradford pears are one of the first trees to bloom in the spring. They are a fruitless tree so no messy fruit to mess with and have a nice rusty colored leaf in the fall.

 This forsythia bush is at the edge of our driveway. You would think they would be easy to photograph but not so. I found it very hard to take a shot of a single flower as so many seem to be looking down. I had to lean down and hold the camera up and hope for a decent photo.