In the past week, the temperatures have warmed up along the Colorado Front Range — a lot! As a result, it’s beginning to feel a lot like spring.

There have been dozens of robins flying through the neighborhood. Robins have a special place in my heart for two reasons: first, they were the first bird I learned to recognize as a child. Second, because they are often a harbinger of spring.

Along the greenbelt, Mama Owl snoozes in her nest. She needs to rest while she can — the eggs are due to hatch in the next week or so.

And yesterday, we saw our first flowers of spring! These tiny little sprigs have even smaller maple flowers on them. Who knew maples had flowers? I guess I always thought the little twirly seeds just started dropping in May without anything happening before hand. Silly me!

These flowers are so inconspicuous that I can’t find anything about them on the Internet. Because the flowers aren’t showy enough to attract insects (and few insects would be out so early, anyway), these trees are wind pollinated. I think the long white thread-like strands that are the most obvious part of these flowers are stamens, the part that releases the pollen. And because they are wind pollinated, they have to rely on massive amounts of pollen to ensure that at least some of it reaches the stigma of other maple tree flowers — the part that receives the pollen leads it down to the flower’s ovaries to make seeds.

Hmmm. “Massive amounts of pollen…” An unfortunate side effect of wind pollinated flowers is … allergies. Sigh.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy spring in all its eye-watering glory!