The apple blossoms have fallen from the tree. They’ve fluttered down around the base of the tree in drifts, like the all too recent snow.
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I have a secret to tell you. I plan out my week of blogging on my Sunday walk. I think about what I see and what projects I’m working on. I take a lot of pictures then preparing for the next week of blogging, and supplement with additional pictures taken through the week, as needed.

For example: yesterday’s apple blossom pictures were taken on Sunday with the plan to write about them when I posted them Tuesday and track their bloom progress and take new pictures whenever they opened. The good thing about this kind of planning is that it’s made me open my eyes again and take notice of the world around me because I have to make sure I get the follow up pictures. I’ve felt like I’ve been in something of a fog since well before my endometriosis surgery back in September. It’s nice to feel like I’m starting to reengage in the world around me.

Yesterday when I left the house for work, I saw this.

Flowering apple in full bloom.
Okay, I really saw something very much like that, but with the sunrise coming through it. I don’t carry my camera with me to work, as they’re not allowed in the building. I walk to work, so it’s not as if I can leave the camera in my car.

Under the boughs.

I took these pictures after I came home from work. That was better timing anyway because I could linger under the apple tree as I took my pictures. It made a great excuse to slow down after a long day and just enjoy basking under those fragrant boughs.

From miniature bouquets to blooms by the fistful.
I think it’s sad that we can’t just rest anymore. We have to have an excuse to lay under a tree and do nothing more than look at it. I’m not just laying here. I’m blogging about my apple blossoms. See, I have my camera and everything. This isn’t laziness. It’s work. No wonder we’re all exhausted and no one seems to see anything anymore.

In some ways, I’m a little sad that my flowering apple is in full bloom. Those blooms only last a few days. It seems like it blooms for about the space of a breath before the petals fall and spring has fluttered out of my grasp. At least I got to see it for the moment it was here.

Cherry blossoms may be the symbol of fleeting spring in Japan, but to me spring has always been apple blossoms, from the little sour apple tree in our back yard growing up, to the flowering apple in my front yard now. For the past two years bouts of late frost have taken the blooms from my flowering apple before it could blossom. It’s been very disappointing. Without the apple blossoms, it just doesn’t feel like spring to me.

Thankfully this year it looks like the apple blossoms survived the one late frost we had last week. I’ll get a proper spring this year, assuming the temperatures stay in the mid-forties overnight.

A haven of pinks and greens.

Enrobed in miniature bouquets.
Just a few more days now and spring will finally really be here after a two year absence. I can hardly wait.