It always starts with the weeping cherries in my front yard. I still remember how...concerned...Darren was when I brought home two semi-large-ish (they're the dwarf variety, so not that big) trees to add to our not-so-large-ish yard. One now lives in the front, and the other in the back where I can see it straight out of my scrap room window.
They're still young and doing more leafing than blooming, but they're getting taller every year and are so pretty!
Then there's this gorgeous beauty on the university campus (right outside the building I used to take math in when I was a student there) that has such bright pink buds and tiny, tight flower clusters. I'm not sure what variety of cherry this is, but I know it is one because it actually fruits.
I often divert my usual running course in the spring just so I can run past this tree. In the summer I divert my course to run past a massive bunch of honeysuckle beside the engineering building- the scent is heavenly!
And then there are the yoshinos (the same type as in Washington, D.C.). There's really nothing else like them, and we have them all over Huntsville- on the university campus, at our church, and all over the research park I work in. There are even tons of them around the apartment buildings behind one of our Target stores! Yes, I can and have functioned as a cherry blossom tour guide in our city. :)
I get up pretty early in the morning and then dash out again at sunset to photograph these guys in the "good" light. This year Darren went with me on a lot of my excursions, too. I think my crazy is rubbing off on him.
And now I wait for another year for them to come around again!