first dozen

4.13.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

Everything outdoors is filled in and green now! I came home with hundreds of pictures Sunday afternoon and struggled to narrow my selections down to 36, so I’m splitting them down to sharing a dozen a day for three days.

We were delighted to find a pair of house finches enjoying a late lunch at the feeders.

And then there were plenty of flowers, of course!

crossvine
wild columbine (aka eastern red columbine)
wildflowers in the sassafras sapling grove
??? amsonia tomentosa or woolly bluestars ???
eastern bluestar

I noticed this well-defined fern shadow on the boardwalk (above) and then found the beam of sunlight on a Christmas fern (below) that was creating it.

The cinnamon ferns (below) have grown so tall since I photographed their fiddleheads on March 26th!

Blooming wild azaleas scattered around the botanical garden looked so pretty there, accenting all that new greenery.

wild azalea (pinxter flower)

to be continued …

8 thoughts on “first dozen”

    1. Thanks, Ally. Sometimes they’re hard to spot deep in the woods — I only discovered them when a friend pointed one out to me back in Connecticut.

  1. Beautiful! Spring has truly sprung there. We’re still a little behind you. I think your little question mark flowers are bluets.

    1. Thank you, Robin! I don’t think they are bluets, though, because they have five petals instead of four. Google id seems to say they are amsonia tomentosa or woolly bluestars, which aren’t native to this area.

  2. I love the azaleas and those star-shaped flowers, whatever they might be. I find it interesting the different shapes flowers come in, don’t you? And what a find — that fern shadow! That’s keeping your eyes peeled for the surprises all around us!

  3. There’s so much for the eyes to feast upon at the Botanical Garden Barbara, so with all that color sprouting everywhere – no wonder you took so many photos. I would do the very same thing.

    I have never seen House Finches – the male is so vibrant and then just after the female, that beautiful Crossvine, Wild Columbine and finally the Wild Azalea, all with their similar colors, even complementing the male House Finch’s colors. I like how you captured the Christmas Fern’s shadow perfectly on the boardwalk.

    I’m looking forward to the remaining two in the series of “Dozens”. 😊

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