Here Comes Spring

Technically, we still have a few more days until spring officially arrives, but signs of spring are beginning to show themselves all around.

On our recent trip, we saw several trees starting to bloom. I grew up in East Texas, but I usually don't miss it very often -- except during spring and fall. I have always enjoyed watching the daffodils bloom early, usually in February, followed by my personal favorite wisteria, as well as dogwoods and red buds. We don't have much spring color where I live now, but we do have some.

Along Southland Boulevard, there is a wisteria plant whose bluish blooms are hanging over a fence near the road. And there are numerous red bud trees all over town, some of them quite pretty.

I took a nice walk through Rio Concho West the other day, but was disappointed in the lack of color. Most of the trees are now leafing out, but there really aren't many colorful blooms. Later on we'll have some pretty yuccas and colorful prickly pear roses, but right now, I'm not seeing too much color.

Below are some pictures I snapped.

I don't know what kind of tree this is, but I love its beautiful and near perfect shape. It seemed to leaf out overnight. It is just a few houses up the hill from us.

I'm not sure what this tree is, but I would guess it is an ornamental pear of some sort. We have a handful of these in the subdivision.

Although this tree looks like the one in the above picture, it doesn't have as nice of a shape. In the fall, it has some nice colors, as shown in the archived picture below of the same tree I took this past autumn.

This is the same tree as above, but during November.

I'm not sure what this tree is. The blooms seem more like cotton balls than the trees in the pictures above. Could this be a dogwood? I just don't know.

Most of our trees have no color; they just leaf out in spring like this one. We are still waiting for the 2 oak trees in our yard to leaf out. 

This is the only red bud tree I saw in our subdivision, and it is rather pathetic. I do not think it gets much water where it is located next to the road, so it is probably suffering. The color is certainly not very bright, and the blossoms are scant.

I believe this is a mountain laurel. If so, there are 2 in our community. You can tell from the trees in the background that it is not a large plant.