All I Know

Red Buds in Raleigh, Spring 2014

IMG_0328I think that the red bud trees were prettier this year than any time I can remember. There may be some debate about whether this observation is objectively true, or a subconscious correlation to the fact that they bloomed after we had had a few nice days, and it got cold again, but not as cold as it had been, after the winter that we were all so. So. So. tired of.

But I think it was objectively true. This is my third consecutive year commuting on Western Boulevard, and I don’t recall the red buds any other year. Some years the variables are right for blazing fall colors, or acorn crops. A couple of years ago my Dad wrote a letter in the paper saying the crepe myrtle was as pretty that year than any he could remember in over 90 years, and he was right. But 2014 was the red bud spring.IMG_0349

The branches and sub-branches, never especially thick, bend and turn into tortuous and unpredictable patterns. From a distance it appeared that whole branches were covered in the blooming flowers, like a parade float. Still at a distance, driving by them each day, I couldn’t really figure out how that could be, since it is well-known that all blossoms emerge from the tips of each branch. Or not (see right).

We had a red bud tree in our front yard growing up. It was taller than most of the ones I saw this year. Or maybe it’s just that I was shorter. My Mom had a hard time keeping it alive as I recall. I seem to remember treatments of one kind or other being applied to it. In the end it didn’t make it, but as for that I don’t believe anything on that lot is at was then. IMG_0355

I wanted to take these pictures near dawn to catch the beauty that I had been seeing day after day for a couple of weeks, but the days started to get away from me, so I made a point of going out one morning before it was too late. leaves were sprouting from the ends of the branches, barely evident, but plainly signaling the coming of the next phase.

After I shot the pictures, it seemed to me in the following days that the lustre had vanished the red buds almost immediately, or was that imagined?IMG_0360IMG_0364

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