Hiding in plain site

Look at all that color! I picked all of these budding stems today on a one-hour walk along Grass Lake with my best friend Kristin. If you weren’t paying attention, you could think it’s still all gray and brown here in Minnesota. But not at all! I love that I can still be astonished walking my same trails every year :-)

collection of early spring buds: cottonwood, dogwood, red maple, pussywillow, unidentified, red elderberry, forsythia, dogwood, cottonwood