When I was planning out my travel schedule this year, it never occurred to me that I would have the fortuitous opportunity of experiencing three Springs.  Spring is one of my favorite times of year.  After a long, cold, brutal, colorless winter suddenly there is a huge rebirth of color and everything comes to life.  This rebirth of life brings so much joy to me that at times I find myself engulfed in absolute spring fever madness.

I can’t concentrate.  I can’t stand to be indoors.  My heart and soul are bursting with energy to be outside and to be alive once again.  I want to run faster.  I want to breathe freer.  My soul is begging me to be outside, experiencing the thrill of mother nature at her finest.

Photo of tulip bursting with color and brightness and growing towards the sun…

This year, I’ve been so incredibly lucky to have experienced three complete and different springs.  My first spring was a month ago in Guatemala where I enjoyed lovely blooming jacarandas, bouganvillas, and other fragrant flowering trees.  Next, there was my trip last week to Virginia where I went absolutely crazy snapping photo after photo of my sister’s peonies, dogwoods, and pink-hued crab apples, all in full bloom.  Then I had the delight of going absolutely crazy taking pictures of the colorful, brilliant tulips I saw in the gardens of Colonial Williamsburg.  I took so many flower pictures that I was starting to wonder if I wanted to grow a garden in my camera!  Yet each picture filled me with a thrill.  They were absolutely stunning.  (See post:  “The Simple Beauty of Spring Tulips“).

Now, I am back home in Minnesota once again and lone behold, spring has started to begin here!  I couldn’t feel more overjoyed!  We don’t have many tulips yet but we do have an enormous variety of gorgeous perennials in all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes.  The early spring bloomers are here:  The daffodils, the lilies and other flowers that I still don’t know their names (but thanks to my readers, you are filling me in!).

Remember this flower above, the one I saw at Lake Harriet during my daily run?  Well, thanks to a fellow reader and Minneapolis native, the mystery was solved!  It is a pasque flower that comes out right around Easter!  I saw lots more last night.  

It was a rainy Friday night.  I was feeling rather exhausted.  It had rained all day long and was freezing cold.  Only a mere 50 degrees and a stiff wind.  But that didn’t stop my curiosity and interest in seeing if anything wonderful had come up at the nearby Trial Gardens by Lake Harriet, my favorite urban lake.  It was 7:30 pm and getting dark.  But the flowers I found were so stunning and so brilliant after the fresh rain, I could hardly stand it.

So get ready for flower overload!  I took over 80 pictures but a lot didn’t turn out because the wind was blowing so hard, that the flowers were twirling all over the place.  If you don’t appreciate spring flowers and the joy they bring you, then this post is not for you!  If you do love colors and rebirth of life, then I hope you enjoy my gallery of early spring flowers.  P.S.  The day long rain had a brilliant effect on my photographic efforts!  You can see glistening drops of rain on most of the flowers.  So beautiful!!!

The Pasque Flowers (Easter Flowers)

Hiding from the rain and waiting to open….

Bursting with color…

Now for my favorite…the iris!

The peonies aren’t out yet and just begging to open up….

I love these little purple flowers.  I think they are lupine but am always ok with being corrected. 

A burst of yellow to change things up….

Then back to purple and pink.  Again, I don’t know what these are called but they are sure delicate and pretty. I also like the purples and pinks together.  My daughter Sophia’s two favorite colors!

Good old daffodil.  Fragrant and bright. 

More colors….

These blossoms were not doing too well with the cold, windy night.  Hope they made it!

Oh….the tulips, hiding from the rain. 

I love the foliage of this flower.  

This iris is going to be beautiful.  Perhaps I will check back today to see if it has opened (the sun has finally come out!).

Last but not least…..

As dusk settled in, I had some unexpected visitors.  A group of six deer, right in the heart of the city, greeted me shyly where they munched on bushes.  I have lived her for eleven years and have never seen deer in the city.  It was beautiful yet sad too.   They don’t belong in the heart of a city.  But where are they to go.

What’s your favorite flower?  Do you love spring?