Look Small: Buds

Somehow spring manages to be surprising every year. The temperatures come up–finally! The snow melts. You’re buzzing with anticipation, anxiously scanning the ground for shoots, the grass for green and the trees for buds. Then, every year, somehow, without looking, everything’s green and you missed the moment of transformation again. Every year. It’s part of spring’s magic, I think; you look and look, not wanting to miss the trick again, and then–tada! There it is, spring, like the rabbit from the magician’s hat.

Where did it come from? How did you miss it again?

But I still look every year. I don’t know about you. Every year I stop by the trees, bend a branch or twig down to eye level, check out the buds. Swelling? Opening? Greening? I smell them, though I don’t know what I’m smelling them for, since if buds-on-the-verge-of-opening have a distinctive scent I haven’t yet figured it out. I even thank them. Look at you, aren’t you beautiful! Thank you for coming back.

And this year I took my fancy-pants new macro birthday-present lens and took as many pictures as I could as close as I could. Buds fascinate me. Every tree does it differently. Single buds, groups of buds, scaly buds, furry buds, red buds, brown buds, green buds, purple buds. I sound like a Dr. Seuss book.

Wherever you are, I guarantee something buds in springtime. Get up close and really look at it. Hell, smell it. Maybe you’ll pick up the whatever-it-is I can’t catch.