Spring has Sprung!!

The biggest seasonal change of the year is underway!  Pick your indicator - first flower, last snow, first Turkey Vulture, first Spring Peepers.  We had them all today, a beautiful and busy blue sky day (before tomorrow's freezing rain and snow)!

I'm running out of pictures for the blog, so I went out into the yard briefly, and there they were, a small but bright blue patch of Dwarf Iris, a stunning royal blue.  My favourite, and usually first, spring flower.

In last year's debris of the scree garden, the patch of blue stood out like a beacon, and there are quite a few yet to bloom.

Our tiny patch of Snowdrops is also unfolding, almost in bloom after fighting their way up through the leaf litter.

See the snow - it's GONE!  Today the last little white patch of snow where I blew the snow off the driveway into a pile, vanished.  Perhaps the dullest picture I've ever posted, but it's gone.  Unfortunately, when you have a gravel driveway, a snowblower the size of mine picks up a fair bit of gravel, especially in the first two or three storm events.  Every spring I have to rake it up into little piles, gather it up, and toss it back on the driveway, one of those early spring chores.

We're still getting lots of morning frost (here on a cedar rail in the fence) as the night-time temperature drops below freezing, but on a day like today the sun burns it off by 9 a.m.

And we've seen our first Turkey Vultures, here the way you actually see them, a distant black pair of wings in the sky.  Had to dig into the archives for this one, taken a year ago on a hike up to some cliffs here in the valley.

Another rather dull picture, but standing here we heard our first Spring Peepers, and a solitary Spring Chorus Frog (if only I could photograph the sound!)  So that's the first flower, the first Turkey Vulture, and the first frogs calling, all in 24 hours!  Spring has truly started, even though snow is forecast for tomorrow.