Spring in Bloom / "Innocence" Photo Spotlight

My, my, my, well, so I started putting this post (and 2 others) together about 2 months ago now as the follow up to my Vernal Equinox post and then it turned into a belated Earth Day post -

{Belated Happy Earth Day my friends! (For those perhaps not “in the know” April 22nd is Earth Day and April in and of itself is Earth Month 🌎🌍🌏). What a fitting time, in my opinion, as April is the month where for a lot of us, the world is truly awakening from its Winter slumber. And boy has Spring been blossoming and blooming in my neck of the woods over the past couple weeks since I last wrote to you!😍}

- and now here we are in June, BUT I never gave up on these ideas and how I could still translate them into relativity…

Needless to say, it has been a very busy Spring here in my Landscaping world and I needed it, so it has been good. Sure, I’ve not exactly been able to do a lot of things I would have loved to, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Since late March it has been Spring cleanups mixed with a little pruning here and some this ‘n’ that there and MULCH, MULCH, MULCHING my little heart out! 😂 Which if you know me well enough, I love to say if I could be Backpacking, Photographing, Selling my Artwork, AND Mulching all at the same time… Boy you wanna talk about living the dream!!! 😂 And the funniest part is, I’m not really joking - I LOVE mulching! It is honestly my favorite way to work aside from this whole Wilderness Photography thing😊

So, again here we are, on the brink of the Summer Solstice, and I still want to share this photograph and these thoughts (as well as those other two I mentioned earlier) with you before we do officially turn to Summer.

So why now? Because! Lol! I love this photograph (probably my favorite quintessential Spring image to date, although I do have a few new hopefuls looming…). And I took a personal day yesterday to finally catch up on so many things that have been neglected and/or pushed to the side out of survival mode for a while, haha!

And honestly, I have jotted down so many thoughts in the moment and taken so many pictures around my home that I have been burning to compile and share with you!

So, enjoy “Innocence” and then be sure to keep scrolling down for some meditations and then a visual slideshow I put together of Spring in Bloom 2026 around our landscape.

And be on the lookout Friday for another blast from the past and some important Art Festival updates!…

“Innocence” - My Father’s Woods, PA

Photographed April 4th, 2012

Mamiya RB67 w/ 90mm lens (Normal)

F32 at 1/4 of a second

Professional Fuji Velvia 50

You know, in all honesty there isn’t a ton I have or feel I need to say about this photograph.

If you recall from my previous post highlighting “Rise and Shine” - you will notice these were both taken on the same day! I caught “Rise and Shine” as the rising sun crested the facing mountains to bask the scene before me in golden light! And then shortly afterwards I began meandering my way down my Dad’s 4-wheeler trail to explore more of the forest in the morning light only to compose this scene about an hour or so later.

Isn’t it crazy? Sometimes I can spend days backpacking and not bust out the “real camera” and other days, it’s like I could shoot a whole box of film and have everything be portfolio worthy!

Again, this photograph doesn’t come with any harrowing tales, only a lovely morning spent hiking around exploring on my Dad’s wooded property.

But when I look at this image, all I can envision, no, all I can feel is the jubilance of Spring in all of it’s fresh, new wonder - innocent of anything that lay before it or of what is to come - the newborn child of Nature’s cycle.

I just wanna lay on the grass on this idyllic April day, looking up at these beautiful blooms and blue sky after a good, long Winter and scream YES, SPRING!!!

If you are willing to pull yourself away from that daydream and continue on, I would greatly appreciate your indulgence to relive the Season in these journal entries that range from early March through the present June now. And then enjoy the slide show of roughly 50 images I put together from throughout this Spring around our humble abode (and a couple other places too😊).

Wednesday March 11th - “The biggest highlight of this unseasonable warmth is that right on cue, the first warm night - the Spring Peepers were heard! And they grew last night and this evening have been an echoing chorus of ambience throughout the night sky!”

Wednesday March 18th - “Even though it may not have been everything I could have hoped for in an adventure standpoint, this past winter was what it was. And it was a beautiful, good old-fashioned Winter. And one of mental rest and much reflection…”

Saturday March 21st - “A nice balance of warmth from the Sun and slight coolness of the breeze today as the birds busy the air. For a couple weeks now the flocks have been returning.

The subtle signs of change continue to slowly grow as Spring is now astronomically official! The tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils are poking their heads from the ground, which softens by the day. Splotches of grass are beginning to show a more lively shade of green and the rains have a scent of fresh was to them.”

Saturday March 28th - “Leo’s chasing the Moon tonight.😊

It’s a brisk one on this crisp, clean, starry night illuminated by the waxing gibbous moon this beautiful early Spring Eve.”

Friday April 3rd - “What a great day!

One of those days that despite the tornado of shit swirling around you, you find peace, calm, and zen happiness in the day that has been given to you and the tasks at hand…

On this particular day - I rested, made a good breakfast, took care of business related tasks on-line, and spent a blissful few hours on our outdoors getting our beds cleaned up for Spring growth, completely re-defined all bed edges, and gathered all the down branches, sticks, and twigs!

It was a lovely Spring day, as good a Friday as Good Friday’s come, in my opinion! - A cool, cloudy start climbing into the high 60’s with ample sunshine and part cloudiness. A beaut of an early Spring day to get your business in order!”

Saturday/Sunday April 11th/12th - “Hyacinth Intoxication! Hyacinth breezes and Cherry Blossom waves…”

Saturday May 16th - “Toads singing their hearts out on a lovely warm Spring evening.”

Tuesday June 2nd - “Man, what a beautiful day! My mind drifts from this pile of mulch towards camping and backpacking adventures…

Sunny, bright blue skies, white puffy clouds, fully leafed greenery, and a nice 72 degree breeze!

Spring, as it does, has taken me from beautiful blooms aplenty to delicious scents in the staggering of Hyacinth, Lilac, Honeysuckle, and finally to vibrant young green… and oh wait, is that the Chestnut trees I smell coming into bloom?!”

If you made it all the way here, thank you so much for your time and interest and support, it truly means the world to me!

All my best,

Brandon

Welcome Spring! / "Rise and Shine" Photo Spotlight

Belated Happy Spring my fine friends! I had originally hoped for this to be a Vernal Equinox post, but alas we are a little more than 2 weeks in to the new Season now. Well, I guess (actually I know, 😂) I could be doing much worse. I had also hoped to squeeze in an Ode to Winter ‘25/26 post as well, but I’m now too far past that idea and figure perhaps the notion can be a segue for when Autumn turns to Winter at the end of this year. (Don’t worry, I have lots of journal notes to bring me back to my thoughts at the time that they occurred!) And seeing as how my previous correspondence was quite a story, perhaps it is good you’ve had a little break from me, haha!

There is one thing I do want relay in relation to the Equinox that I read on that day from The Weather Channel this year, that funny enough, I never actually had fully realized. Now, I have for many years known that on both Equinoxes, it is the occurrence of the Sun passing directly over the Equator, bringing relatively equal parts day and night to both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere’s. So, 12 hours day and 12 hours night for everyone, right? Not exactly, thus the phrase “relatively equal parts.” But, this I was well aware of also.

If you happen to be as much of a geek as me and investigate these types of weather and astronomical events, you know that the further North or South you go from the Equator, the more drastic the differences between day and night get. Thanks to the curvature of the Earth and the slight tilt on our axis, as you move North to South, and East to West for that matter, the Sunrise and Sunset times are never exactly the same for everyone, everywhere (outside of your neighbors within a several mile radius at least).

For instance, where I live in Central/Northeastern Pennsylvania, we experience our “personal equinox” day (that is, equal 12 hours of both day and night) usually on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th, a few days prior to the Astronomical Vernal Equinox. Now, if you think about it🤔, depending on your latitude and longitude, the day that you actually experience this equality of day and night is going to differ all around the globe.

Ok, now for what kind of blew my mind and simultaneously made me feel silly for not thinking of or cognizantly realizing it anyway… Despite these slight variations in one regions’ time variations to another’s, on the occurrence of the actual Astronomical Equinox (Vernal or Autumnal) - We are all, everyone of us on this Planet, for one brief day experiencing the most equivalence of day and night to one another as can be possible! That is to say, from the North Pole to the South Pole and everywhere in between, we cannot be any closer in the relationship between dark and light that we experience than on that day! How cool of a concept is that!!!🤯🌎🌍🌏😁

Whew, ok, enough of the science lesson. I just really wanted to share that idea of equality, as it really did strike a cord with me of how awesome that it really is.

I do hope this finds you all well and enjoying the onset of Spring! In my neck of the woods it has been, for the most part, a prototypical late March / early April - an ongoing battle between Old Man Winter, wanting to hold on, and the Jubilant Face of Youth, eagerly ushering in. This Great Tug of War will typically settle over the coming weeks of April, though bouts of cold and even snow are not that uncommon for us even well into May.

What I have noticed that alarms me a little more this season is the warmth we have had in the overnights on several occasions. A high 70’s March day or early April hitting low 80’s for short spurts certainly isn’t crazy but, I feel like when we have had those days this season, the nights have also stayed very warm - a few high 50’s and low 60’s, which IS kind of crazy for this time of year! And I feel like it has helped some of the sensitive early bloomers get going perhaps a little earlier than they would have after our Winter. And, of course, with an inevitable hard freeze looming tonight, I can’t help but think - if those nights had cooled more appropriately, would these blooms be in a safer boat as unopened buds???… I am sending you positive vibes (and maybe a little wind to help keep the frost off!) my fresh beauties!

Alright, I have a lot of Photo Spotlights, stories, and fun stuff I want to share throughout this Spring, so I am going to pause my thoughts here for the time being and let you enjoy this seldom showcased beauty of an early Spring dawn…

“Rise and Shine” - My Father’s Woods, PA

Photographed April 4th, 2012

Mamiya RB67 w/ 65mm lens (wide-angle)

F32 for 1 second

Professional Fuji Velvia 50

This is the first of a few photographs I intend to share with you this Spring that the location will be titled “My Father’s Woods.” There aren’t grand tales of near peril or epically long days on the trail to go along with them. They are, nevertheless very near and dear to me. They are photographed on my Dad’s property in Central/South Pennsylvania. Several acres of gorgeous mixed hardwood hillside nestled in a peaceful valley along the Juniata River and facing the Tuscarora Mountains which boast an array of bounties throughout all seasons. In particular though (and same with Dad), I have often found no other Season finer here than Spring.

The abundance of naturally occurring Eastern Redbud, Cherry, and Dogwood Trees in amongst this ridge, and throughout the valley sides to be honest, is a brilliant burst of long awaited, eye-popping, exclamating beauty come Winter’s end and signaling the birth of Spring!

I love to steal a day and night or two here if I can during this gift of splendor. Every year is different, of course, but if the stars align - The spatter of soft white Cherry Blossoms will still linger as fresh, vibrant green begins to dot the hillsides and the unreal, basically magical pink/purple flowers of the Redbuds appear in waves through the wood and throughout the valley, only to be finally complemented alongside the brilliant white glow of the Flowering Dogwoods. And, as if one need more, as your eyes delight in being amongst this wonder on a warm April eve, perhaps an early scent of Lilac wafts through the air. Yes, my friend, you have indeed stepped into a Fairytale Forest and are now spellbound…

Rise and Shine, creatures of all ilk, Spring is here!

All my best,

Brandon