Along Piney Woods Church Road, the earliest to bloom of the red maples have begun producing seeds. These nascent maple keys have not yet developed their final shape, but are merely tiny, oval forms suspended where the flowers used to be.
On yet another rainy, wintery afternoon, with the air temperature struggling to rise above 40, and the wind chill in the lower 30s, I started off down Piney Woods Church Road hoping to discover something new — some further omen of spring’s return. I was delighted to find, almost immediately, more red maples in bloom — this time, a couple of trees growing near the intersection with Rico Road. I snapped a number of photos of them. Upon returning home, I was most drawn to my images of this particular cluster of flowers. Alas, a dead stalk of some kind of large weed in the background provided an annoying distraction in every single shot. So I broke with tradition, trudging back a second time to take the photograph below.
In the woods along Piney Woods Church Road, the red maple trees are in bloom; gazing through the forest, I can see the red haze that marks their presence. A couple of young maples happen to grow along the road edge near Hutcheson Ferry Road, and their open blossoms betoken spring’s arrival, though the calendar (and the current weather forecast) would argue otherwise.
It is a frenetic time of year along Piney Woods Church Road. Blink, and buds open, trees burst into flower, spring arrives….