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 …