Early Spring Rhapsody

Today...the seldom recent sun...made an appearance...nudging me outward bound with my new camera. In previous Januaries...i've gone on walks to check out the first signs of spring on the land. When I tell people...even some who live
on the West Coast...that spring is on its way by the end of January...they look at me sometimes as if they are wondering about what it is I've been injesting...to come up with such a claim. Maybe they're simply tied to the well worn notion that
spring starts in the fourth week in March...and that's that. Today's trip out...was...you could say...an evidence gathering one
...to underline the notion I carry of the early coming of spring...out here. I went to the edge of Lost Lagoon...bordering
Stanley Park...and began my picture taking of various flowers returning. Soon...I'd taken pictures of...witch hazel...with their
twirled yellow petals...[I've also seen in the last week the dusky red bearings...of another branch of this family of flora...
on a bush twice my height...and with no leaves...only flowers]...broom...with its rich yellow flowers...first forsythia flowers...
[that I couldn't get a picture of]...various trees...some as high as twenty feet tall...full of what are called "cherry blossoms" out
here...[I want to find out their scientific name]...some with light...some with dark pink flowers...a sumptuosly blooming
pink azalea bush...a close up of a bunch of pink rhodedendron flowers. To top of today's underlining of my feeling that
the West Coast...is the oasis of Canada...protected by the Rockies...at the end of my walk...I took a picture of a cluster
of banana trees...that somehow survived the winter...with their fresh green leaves coming out...with palm leaves behind them...to reinforce the tropical theme. I returned home with much documented evidence of my notion about the early
coming of spring...today. I hope my friends east of the Rockies will bear with me...as I rave on about the early coming of
spring...and look upon it...simply as the utterances...of someone in love with a certain season...and the place on Earth...
where he is privileged to live.....................Quester.