Spring is bursting out all over!

I don’t seem to have done a proper nature diary post for a while, so this one is probably going to be quite long. You might want to go and get a cup of tea (or other hot beverage) and get comfortable…

Firstly the Beech tree in the garden has gone from budburst through to be pretty much fully in leaf. (Excuse the quality of pics 2 and 3 – they were snapped on my iPhone)

It’s amazing how much it changed in less than a week. I am very fond of this tree and so are the birds – we have all our bird feeders in this tree and it has many visitors.

Some big news from the garden today is that we have a frog in residence in our pond! We are delighted!! 🙂 We were putting an aquatic plant I bought in the pond, my daughter was adding a few new pebbles, and I was topping it up with more rain water, when suddenly he(she) appeared as if to say hello! I caught this quick snap on my phone as it happened to be in my pocket at the time. We also now have 5 Pondskaters (up from just the one at the start) and several beetles. We’re really pleased with how it’s going so far.

A little walk round the village today has shown that the time of the Blackthorn is now past, and Hawthorn is in the process of taking over. Some of the Hawthorn buds are not yet open but they are fat and ready, while most of the Blackthorn flowers are faded and over, with the leaves now growing larger.

Next big news in the flower world is the new arrival of … drum roll please … the Buttercup! This is one of the first ones spotted by me this year:

I also spotted my first fully open Aquilegia. These are also called Columbines, but when I was a child we always called them Granny Bonnets and I like that name for them 🙂

There are many Dock Leaf Beetles about now, and they are still feeling a bit of the spring fever as mentioned in a previous post featuring many beetle varieties. They seem to have reached the next stage now as I have spotted some of these eggs on the Dock which I believe are theirs. The Dock is also starting to flower now.

There are a few other flowers coming out now too:

I have some other photos to share but I’ll save them for another post as they deserve to be specially featured! 🙂

This post is my contribution to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Spring