It was almost 60 degrees at 9pm last night, and the wind felt even warmer than that!
It was amazing.
There were even bees out in some of these beautiful flowers:

Probably not, but it sure felt like it today!
The air felt mild and smelled of springtime, and there were little flowers growing all around!
One block in particular had an overwhelming smell of flowers; it was wonderful!

We traveled out to a nearby park (Bwrch Nant-yr-Afan) for a hike and to watch the feeding of some Red Kites, a medium sized raptor.
The hike was nice, though it was drizzely, but you can definitely see that the moss grows well.

There are advantages to hiking up tall hills:

and advantages to paying attention to moving flowers:

The Red Kites are being fed by the Welsh Kite Trust, who are trying to bring back the Kite from near extinction. Watching the swarming is impressive, and they are just impressive birds:

The first day in Wales again brought up lots of memories of our last trip there, ten years ago. I immediately set off across in a straight line, across field and gate to get where I wanted to go. Luckily, on the way back to town (after a long day of tramping across the countryside) there was as a path that was neatly nestled between ivy-covered trees.

And here is one of the niftier ivy-covered trees:

The fall Welsh countryside is usually predominated by green; lots of green grass, lots of heather, and lots of gorse bushes, without too many of the flowers that make up it’s springtime brightness. So when I found this delicate flower blowing in the wind, I was more than happy to spend a few minutes trying to get it to hold just so for me.

There were several pretty flowers on top of long stalks that were begging to be photographed:

While doing some much needed yard work, I had to trim back the passion flower vines and so several of the unique and beautiful flowers came inside, where they curled up and went to sleep at nightfall.

And this plant was just all over the place!

It’s rose season!
And lots of other flower season too!
Wheee!

There was some impressive rain (and thunder & lightning too!) recently, and these flowers all had very pretty water droplets on them.

I like the self portrait in this one:

And this one was all happy with it’s sun shaped yellow bits in it!

It really does warm your heart (and body) to have beautiful sunny days this time of year—it reminds you that summer is on it’s way! But even on gloomy days with the rain, we have lots of new plants budding, so that’s always good too.

We get them all this time of year in Seattle.
But, we also get lots and lots of flowers!

and a doggy.

As the finger pointing above shows, he is at fault (mostly) for my lack of posting here. Integrating a doggy into a household takes a huge amount of time and effort. He’s well worth it and is a great companion!

I have taken a few pictures between walks with him, and a few of those have even come out pretty nice. There was a very nice bee who let me get close and take photos of him:

There is a nice under-water looking plant which was conveniently above water:

And a nice two tone flower which had it’s babies all in a row behind him:

Today felt a lot like spring, perhaps because it’s the first time in a while I’ve gotten to take an extended walk around, but maybe it is just feeling like spring out.
Someone felt like decorating their front lawn with lots of Saint Patrick’s day decorations, so that was a fun green sight!

Most flowers are still rather shy about peeking out, but occasionally they do peek out and say hi!

And sometimes they are brazenly hanging out on the corner, being all bright and pretty!

Can’t wait for more to come, especially now that everyone here is healthy enough to go outside again, yay!