A couple of Baltimore Orioles flew out of this lovely crabapple. I attempted to take a picture of them as they were hopping around in the bushes but all I got were flashes of orange in leafy green. It is interesting how you can see things much more clearly in real life than in a photo. It isn't just a matter of pixels, "seeing" is more interactive than "looking". You change your focus of attention, you use your depth perception, you move your head to parallax shift thing that are in the way, all in order to construct an image in your mind of the item that has attracted your attention.
I've been noticing these violets along my path for about a decade now. The mowers abandoned their strip around the 1995 planting area over 5 years ago, and now the sumac are starting to overgrow the path yet the violets persist. The trilliums and bloodroot I planted that are a few steps away from these violets inside the forest are still there. They have hardly expanded there presence. I think there were 6 trilliums this year, before the rabbit tax. Time moves at a more sedate pace for plants.
