Flower away hazelnut! Some trees go all out when it comes to flowering. Hazelnuts are early bloomers. On this warm, sunny, spring day, they have outdone themselves. How many thousands of blossoms are on a single hazelnut tree? Tens of thousands? Over a hundred thousand?

And one lucky hover fly has the whole tree to itself.

Is that a bee? In mid February? That was my first thought seeing a fuzzy bundle feasting on the hazelnut blossoms. But no, it turned out to be a hover fly instead. A tell tale sign is it only has a single pair of wings. No bee would be caught dead without a full set of two wings.

If you are an insect who loves flowers, it pays to get out early in the season so you can have a whole hazelnut tree to yourself.

Shake a hazelnut tree which is in bloom and a cloud of pollen dust fills the air. But sadly, if you get hay fever from hazelnut pollen, you may be allergic to hazelnuts. That would be a bummer.

Underneath the hazelnuts, an artichoke has sprouted. I’m thinking this may have sprouted from seed. When artichokes bud, I always let some bloom for the wonderful, purple flowers. There are substantial sprouts where artichokes grew last year. But this minuscule artichoke sprouted where no artichoke grew last year.

It’s only February, but already I’m dreaming of summer days with arms full of heavy artichokes plucked out of the garden.

This early spring morning started out foggy. According to the Japanese calendar, Friday, February 4th, was the first day of spring, 立春 – Risshun. It’s a day to chase the demons out of the house and invite good fortune in. I could do that more than once a year. Some weeks every day.

It’s actually more than just a day. It usually starts on February 4 and ends on February 18. It is one of the 24 solar terms in the year. With each day longer than the one before it, each day seems more spring like than the one before.

Dry weather is in the forecast. A week of mostly dry weather should help dry out the garden enough to start getting it ready for planting.

The hens are laying more eggs, a sure sign of spring. I may even have one that has gone broody. She was all fluffed up and warm underneath. I’ll know for sure in a few days. It’s a bit early, but after the harsh winter maybe they’re ready to get a head start on raising a family.

From a the way this early spring morning started so foggy, I wasn’t expecting this light show at sunset. Iridescent clouds spread out in long pearly strands against the darkening sky. What sort of morning do clouds like this portend?

I looked up when I opened the gate yesterday and saw this brilliant display of blue and white in the sky. The sun lit up the clouds and painted the sky a cobalt blue. Every day is a good day, Yunmen Wenyan said over a thousand years ago. Some days, it’s hard to believe that. Really? “Every day is a good day but today,” is what you want to say. But when the sun, clouds, and sky put on a display like this, it’s easy to believe.

On the drive over to Anacortes, the views didn’t stop. A cloud exploded over the Skagit Valley, between the foothills of the Cascades. Can a sky be more blue? Can clouds be more beautiful?

If one were to make a reference book of the colors blue and white, a cobalt blue sky and sunlit clouds like this is something one would certainly include. “This, everybody, is blue,” you’d say, pointing to the clouds. And where the sun lit up the clouds the most, you’d shout, “This is white, everybody!”

On days like this, the sky seems infinite. But it’s not. A short distance above, the atmosphere stops. And the blue turns inky black. The warmth of a spring day turns cold, the likes of which we can’t experience on earth. The side of your body facing the sun burns to a crisp. And the side facing away instantly freezes and shatters.

A five mile walk takes very little time. A five mile drive goes by quickly. But just five miles above us, we can’t breathe. Many go ten miles or more just to work. But ten miles above, nothing lives. The infinite cobalt blue skies we see on a sunny day are but paper thin. Life on earth is extremely fragile. So if we want our children, grand children, great grand children to enjoy these blue and white skies, we can’t take this fragile earth for granted.

There was sunlight at dawn today instead of thick fog. For a change, the sun’s rays pierced through the thick morning fog this morning. And in no time the clouds went from gray to blue. On a morning like this, it’s easy to imagine spring just around the corner.

The sun’s rays at dawn made the frosty grass sparkle.

The cherry blossom buds are still tiny and hard. But all the sunlight on a day like today will make them grow.

The alder trees are already getting their reddish hue from their swelling buds. A few more weeks and they will be in bloom, though their plain, hanging flowers won’t attract throngs of flower viewer like the cherry trees. And their pollen dust will make many people’s eyes water and noses twitch and sneeze.

The skies which stayed blue all day during the height of the pandemic are a thing of the past. A jet flying in from Asia this morning left it’s mark on the clear blue sky. And an hour later, the contrail had spread across much of the sky.

Hopefully these jet contrails will be a thing of the past some day. Electric jets will take to the skies and future generations will never know blue skies that turn cloudy from all the jets flying overhead.

The swans sure love the bright sunlight. Everywhere I looked on my drive to deliver eggs and tofu, there were swans. I stopped and counted 136 swans in this field. In nearby fields, flocks of swans just as large basked in the morning sunshine.