FIRST DAY OF SPRING

Still in winter's grip. The first day of Spring came to Pine Hollow Arboretum with a coating of sticky snow and only a few occasional breaks in clouds to bring sun to the fields. A pleasant day for a walk on the grounds with surprising white snowball tree-flowers and shadows on the snow that were identifiable by genius and species. These photos were all taken on a late morning walk on March 20, 2013
                               --Alan Casline      click on photos to enlarge them

snow field for walking

The cultivation of trees is the cultivation of the good, 
the beautiful and the ennobling in man.
                                                                       -- J. Sterling Morton

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods 
and poets.
To plant a pine, one needs only a shovel.
                                                ---  Aldo Leopold

snow flowers look like white magnolias

stuck with snow flakes

shadow sketched on snow

Each generation takes the earth as trustees.
We ought to bequeath to posterity as many
forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.
                            ---J. Sterling Morton