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| I found this crocus blooming in my yard yesterday. It's time to quote Algernon Charles Swinburne again. |
" ... time remembered is grief forgotten
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins."
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| Click to enlarge. |
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| Snowdrops are blooming despite the icy rain. Click to enlarge the photo. I have started counting down to spring. Here's a link to a website that makes that easy: https://days.to/until/spring. It tracks other things, too. Like, the next full moon is 4 days away. Just 22 days to Robert Burns Day! And 64 days until Easter. |
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| Grey February with ice in the Delaware River and a color coordinated gull. |
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| Birds have a sophisticated heat exchange system of closely arranged blood vessels that warm blood coming back to the body from the legs, while simultaneously cooling blood flow in the other direction. The bird's core does not lose energy. The bird stays warm inside its insulating feathers. Click to enlarge. |
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| Snowdrops are blooming! I saw the first signs yesterday, just the tips of green spears pushing up. I took the photos in this blog this morning. You can see white petals. These flowers are also called Candlemas Bells because they traditionally bloom in time for the Christian feast of Candlemas on February 2. They made it just in time this year. Click to enlarge. |
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| How do they do it? They have strong leaf tips that can push up through frozen soil and snow. They produce proteins that act like biological antifreeze to keep their sap from freezing. They reproduce asexually from bulbs growing underground. Later in the season, their flowers also can be pollinated by insects and produce seeds. |
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| It's nice to have flowers again. Even if I almost froze looking for them. As the poet Charles Algernon Swinburne said, "blossom by blossom, the spring begins." |
