The Pond in Spring

 Yesterday - May 1 - Mom and I took a lazy walk at the pond and found the scene so serene we might have laid down on the bank and fallen asleep. It reached 82° at 3:30 pm just as we ended our walk and the sky was a calm baby-blue, a few soft clouds reflecting in the placid water.

 If I walked to the pond's edge and looked directly down into the water, I saw swarms of minnows darting about the shallows. A few larger fish sliced into the scene at intervals and then disappeared back into the darker depths. I hoped to see a few black, rubbery tadpoles but I was disappointed in that regard.
 If you stand there looking into the pond, you're apt to lose your balance. It's as though the world has turned upside down, the clouds scooting lazily by at your feet. You tend to follow them with your head until you find yourself leaning too far forward. I soon became sleepy looking at this scene.

 The flowering crabapples are in full bloom and their scent is intoxicatingly sweet. This is their first of two seasons. In the fall I love the smallish red "apples" that fill the tree, just before the first frost. The fruit lasts until well into the winter when, one day with the snow deep, I find them gone while I wasn't looking.

 An ants-eye view of this same scene shows the beauty even from ground level. It is these recent warm days, a little rain and calm skies that have conspired to bring the world to this fresh bloom. I go to the pond for the exercise but I am taken in by the scenery. Mom hobbles along slowly with her cane and when I stop to contemplate a scene and commit it to a photograph she plods ahead and I have to hurry to catch up.
 We are the tortoise and the hare made real. And both equally enjoy a spring day like this.