Slow spring dance

Greetings Everyone!

It has been a long, slow, cool spring here. It feels like its been weeks of endless grey, misty days with very slow warming. It's a challenging time of year because we are all so ready internally for spring to be here, but it takes the land and waters time to warm....and it takes even longer when the sun is shy and veiled. Still, the mists on the lake have been magical.

Because of the cool and chilly spring, it has taken an unusually long time for the green to arrive and for the flowers to start looking fabulous, but the wait has been so worth it. I don't think I can ever recall the Crab Apples and other flowering trees looking so magnificent as they do this year. Now it is a mad scramble to try and make some Faerie houses to take advantage of these spectacular settings before they vanish in the next rainstorm.

Because the last month had been remarkably grey and wet, it was not very conducive to good early spring work or image-taking. However, I did manage to get lucky on a few occasions when I was trying to take advantage of a local phenomenon that I've known about for many years but never could manage to time it right....someone in our neighborhood has planted an incredible abundance of Daffodil and Narcissus bulbs along the boundary edge of their property and this year it was just stunning.

These were taken on a typical late April afternoon and while they look fantastic en mass like this, for my photography with Faerie houses, I needed a brighter day and morning light as these all faced east. I got very lucky the next day with a calm day that had some openings in the cloud cover. It was hard to pick a spot to set the house up because all the flowers were so beautiful!

  I did find a good place finally and brought some mossy bits with me to create a little scene with a large house I had made this past winter. I'm pleased with how the shots came out and here is one of the best ones:

Everything comes and goes so quickly in the spring...after getting just a few good sun-filled moments like this one, the big grey clouds rolled in and the rains began again. I'm glad I took my chance on that morning as the flowers are all mostly gone by now.

This house is one of my personal favorites. I wanted something that has a slightly Scandinavian feeling. The entrance-way took nearly 3 full days to make just by itself. It is all made with peeled Cedar twigs. The working door has an inset window of a leaf-shaped glass bead which looks gorgeous when twilight comes and the lights are turned on. I am waiting for a better location to do a night-time shot but here are some views of the same house I took just after the house was completed: 

As you can see there are a LOT of windows in this house, all twig-latticed and framed inside and out. The house features a lot of spiral detailing and the roof is one I've wanted to try for years...the shingles are made from golden birch bark and because it is a rather large house, it took quite a lot of bark to make all the shingles! I'll have more views of this house later as I want you to see how it looks on the inside and in the twilight with the lights on.

Next time I'll introduce you to the new "supervisor' around here. Its a great story.
Right now I must get out and play with the Lilacs and flowering Crab Apple trees...it s a tough job but someone has to do it!

Have a lovely week-end!