Redwood Green, it’s not a color you hear much about, but new redwood leaves are a florescent green that deserves its own name.

This is what running dogs look like as they dash across the grass in the morning. Takuma 拓真 and Ena 枝那 are just blurs.

Ferns have their own delicate green. At first glance, they look perfect, but if you look closely, you see little imperfections in their intricate design.

Thimbleberries are blushing. In a few weeks, their blushing pink will turn bright red, a perfect compliment to vanilla ice cream.

The dogwood flowers flow like tumbling cascades, from high up in the canopy all the way to the ground.

Barrow Alaska’s record early snowmelt has been in the news recently. Snow at NOAA’s Barrow Observatory started to melt on May 13, 10 days earlier than the previous record for Barrow. An equally astounding, much-earlier-than-usual phenomena are the early blooming potatoes at a man and his hoe. Potato flowers in May? Mid June maybe, but May? I’m surprised there aren’t reporters from Reuters, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, CNN, and more, camping out in the driveway to take pictures of potato flowers blooming so early! It’s as moving a sight as glaciers melting in Greenland.

Bees live in a phantasmagoric world of shapes and colors and fragrances we can’t fathom. For brief moments, following them buzz around flowers, you can get glimpses of what their world is like. Imagine getting your dinner by sticking your tongue into yellow, orange, and violet tubes big enough to push your whole head inside. Eating off flat plates must seem dull to them.

Grape vines have their own special world. Born as white, fuzzy leaves, they unfold into vast sheets of green. What happens to all that baby fuzz? Is it there to keep them warm? So they don’t taste good? So they don’t burn in the blazing sunlight?

The baby chicks have their mother-centered world. To them, their mothers must be towering, gentle giants. What memories of their mothers do they keep when they grow up? As adults, when they tuck their heads under their feathers to sleep, do they have sweet dreams of sleeping under their mother’s feathers?

By the pond, the Japanese Snowbells (Styrax japonica) are blooming. Every spring I look forward to these trees blooming. On a warm sunny day, when they are in full bloom and you can smell their sweet scent, you can lie underneath them and daydream for hours.

So beautiful, so deadly, the foxgloves are blooming. It’s not toxic to bees, which frequent it in droves. But it is deadly to humans and many other animals, so deadly that it is also called Deadmen’s Bells.