Spring beauty

I love this time of year, when half the yards in my neighborhood are completely covered in spring beauty flowers like the ones you see above.

The lawn next door is absolutely covered in spring beauty, and the redbud is blooming:

Meanwhile, my other neighbor’s flowering almond is blooming. I took a picture of it last year, but it was so pretty, I just had to shoot it again:

I’m not sure what this flower is. Some variety of crabapple, I’m guessing, but I can’t get close enough to the tree to get a good look at it. The petals blow over the fence and into the yard every spring, but this is the first time I’ve seen a whole flower:

A few of the petals landed in the pond. Lazarus doesn’t seem to mind:

I found a spectacular plant identification site this evening while I was looking for information about spring beauty. Looking at this site, I got all inspired and decided maybe I’ll just focus on native species for landscaping purposes. It’s certainly easier than fighting with the non-natives to get them to grow, and it doesn’t get much prettier (or much lower maintenance) than plains coreopsis and Indian blankets.

Hope your neighborhood is full of spring beauty.

Emily