Seeing Beautiful: With a K In It

Today Toby and I set off on a walk with the intention of seeing spring beauty in the woods. Spring beauty in the neighborhood is at its peak, in all its glorious gaudiness (click here for last year's post on spring beauty in our yard). There is no overlooking the huge, bright blossoms, the clouds of buzzing insects, or the dusting of pollen on every horizontal surface. Woodland spring is just getting started, and is more subtle.  It helps to know a bit about what to look for. Slowing down and paying attention is required.

We found plenty of signs this morning of spring renewal in the woods.

Violets in a sunny spot just before entering the woods - 

-baby maple leaves-

-lime green new leaves on a sapling - 

-framing, not blocking, the cloudless sky.

Mosses sporting new growth - 

- pollen-producing flowers from a tree - 

- and a wild Carolina jasmine in bloom.

The red sporophytes of a moss jut up. Their spores will take advantage of the spring breezes to spread to new spongy spots in the woods.

Bees explore everywhere for food. This one is investigating something under the leaves,

while ants march within the canyons of a bark wilderness.

Some leaves are too new to have manufactured much chlorophyll.

Grasses seemingly are in a hurry to bloom, not wasting energy on showy pigmented blossoms.

Sometimes "the sweetest things are in small packages."

Neither my camera nor my photographic ability will allow me to capture the iridescence of the tiny spider we discovered, or the hovering bees in flight, their wings just a blur. No visual image can share the humming of millions of tiny wings, the calling of unseen birds to mates and rivals, the smell of dry leaves underfoot, or rustles of tiny animals through those leaves. 

To discover spring in the woods you have to go there. To see that kind of beautiful, you have to put the "k" in it. 

Happy SeeKing Beauty!