New York State (or parts of it, at least) is finally in bloom! After a pretty long, hard winter, the buds on the trees and the small wildflowers have finally blossomed. The sun is out, the rain has doth stopped, and the weather is finally nice for biking, hiking, and more! I decided to take a few photos of the blooms happening here in the Hudson Valley this weekend, so here are a few photos from 3 days’ worth of hiking.

Oh, and everything photographed is from the wild woods–no garden plants here!

(1) Scouring Rush bud (Equisetum hyemale)…looks like inverted blueberries, but that bud is just a 1/2″ tall.

(2) Baby ferns.

(3) A tiny flower looking up to the sun.

(4) An ant goes about its business.

(5) This is a bullfrog tadpole that was fine and dandy, but since I rarely edit my photos and wanted to do something different, I turned on the gamma. Looks like outer space, right?

(6) Waterfall foam making shapes in the river.

(7) Up close and personal with snake scales (and a clover mite) from a Shovel-Nosed Snake (Chionactis).

(8) Stinking Benjamin (Trillium Erectum), which actually didn’t smell bad at all.

View the rest of my weekend photos on my Flickr account, and enjoy the beautiful weather!