Have you ever noticed the way buds open, almost erupting as if in force of a slow-motion explosion?
They don’t just open. They spill. Like milk spreading across a kitchen floor, or water boiling over a pot. Like a snake shedding a too-small skin.
Most of the leaves around here are open, but a few trees remain brown and bare. Watch the buds. See if you don’t see what I mean.
These ones–I believe they are beech–I particularly love, unfolding from their buds like paper fans, their edges furry and corrugated. Look at how elegantly they were packed in and how glad they must now be to stretch, and feel the sun.
Zoopolis 