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Friendly Friday Photo Challenge – Feelings of Spring

Forestwood

I might live in Australia, where the seasons are upside down, a somewhat moot point if you are Australian, but I am always acutely aware just when Spring has sprung in the Northern hemisphere. That is because the Northern ‘hemispherians,’ often get so excited about the first appearances of spring, their shouts are heard all the way ‘Down Under.’

This time of year, my inbox gets spammed with messages of glee and endless photos from the North, of the first snowdrops buds, or blades of greenery that poke their head through the final remnants of snow.

Sunflowers epitomize the essence of feelings of Spring.

I can’t say I blame them for having this Spring zeal, as I suspect they are glad to feel some warmth, while I am glad to have a break from the relentless heat. I thought we might celebrate the onset of Spring by making it this week’s Friendly Friday prompt. If you live in the Southern hemisphere, where Spring blurs into Summer, and thence into Autumn, you may have other photos to choose from that make for a different interpretation of the theme. It is entirely up to you.

Create a post sharing your interpretation of this week’s Friendly Friday prompt

– Feelings of Spring

Instructions:

  • Write and publish a post, tagging the post ‘Friendly Friday’, and adding a url link back to this Friendly Friday post.
  • Include the Friendly Friday logo, if you wish.
  • Post a link to your Feelings of Spring post in the comments here, so we can find you.
  • Please note there are no deadlines for participating. New prompts each week.
  • Browse the other participants’ posts using the links in the comments section, to see how they’ve interpreted the weekly prompt. It can be quite interesting.

Find more Instructions on joining in with Friendly Friday here

Friendly Friday

Friendly Friday Photography challenge is alternately hosted each Friday by
Something to Ponder About  

and

The Snow Melts Somewhere

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Published by Forestwood

Scandinavian culture, literature and traditions are close to my heart, even though I am Australian. To travel is to broaden the mind, so I travel whenever I can. I am an avid crime fiction reader, and enjoy travel photography, writing and a variety of cooking, crafts, and traditional art forms. Politically aware and egalitarian by nature, I have a strong environmental bent. Come and say hi!

105 thoughts on “Friendly Friday Photo Challenge – Feelings of Spring”

    1. You are very welcome to join Ally! Both Snow and I are friendly too! But I have to confess I didn’t grow these beautiful specimens. They are on display in a special garden at Singapore airport. If you are passing through, take a look.

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  3. Such a happy theme this week! And the photos are lovely too, I adore sunflowers! 🤗
    Here, we are probably the last ones to get flowers (in May probably) and our spring is brown and dusty. Today it’s nice and sunny though, yay! On Sunday it’s supposed to snow again.

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    1. So winter is hanging on and Spring is shy in your part of the world, Snow? Hopefully the vision of Sunflowers is a welcome burst of brightness? I cannot even imagine a brown and dusty Spring. Is there little rain in Spring in Finland? I was there in early May as it was all luminescent green and vibrant.

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      1. Winter is just so long over here, it’s normal that it doesn’t get green until May. The dust comes from these little pebbles they throw on the pavements all winter to make them less slippery. When the ice melts, what’s left is dust and dirt. There are these cleaning vehicles that clean the streets but it takes a while for the air quality to get better. Melting snow reveals brown ground and getting snow in April is completely normal too 😊 It’s called an ”after winter”.
        But the feelings of spring are here nevertheless and this springy theme is such a pleasure! And yes, that bright yellow really brings a smile to my face! Hope your home planning is going well? What are you up to this weekend?

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      2. Sorry for my late reply, Snow. I was intending to write a long reply a little later, whilst quickly approving the others but It got very busy over the weekend. Thanks for explaining about the dusty Spring. That makes sense now. No wonder you get excited to see green shoots making their way over the brown dead grass and dust. Snow in April, you say? We just had a mini cold blast with a sprinkling of snow on the Snowy Mountains. It has re-energized me! And everyone seems happier all of a sudden. I guess it is the same with Spring at your end of the world. What a lovely time of the year world wide! Home planning is proceeding, we are heading to contract stage this week, there has been loads of changes necessary which has held up the quoting process. How was your weekend? Did you get out somewhere with the boys to soak up the Spring atmosphere? I suppose there might be some community events organized to welcome the Spring?

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      3. We went to an outdoors playground on Sat, and an indoors one on Sunday since it was raining (it cost 20 eur + 13 eur for parking! luckily the outdoors ones are free)… we all have a cold right now so there’s been lots of crying 24/7… I don’t know about any events, people here aren’t very community-minded, events are usually private… it would be nice if there were fun, spring-themed family events for free… maybe one day in the future, as Finland is becoming more international, community values will become important… who knows 🙂 Enjoy your heat break! 😉

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      4. 33 euros! EEk! That is an expensive play session. Indoor play centres are a strange concept to me although I did visit one with my friend and daughter in Norway a few years back. I always wondered what kids did years ago? Are these centres as popular now with the advent of technology? And strangely enough, when I took my kids to the park (outdoors) they would often end up with colds the next day. I don’t know if it was germs on the outdoor equipment or the hand to mouth frequency of touching all the equipment that other kids had touched, and then putting their hands to their mouths? Unsure.
        And I have no idea why this comment ended up in spam – very strange wordpress gremlins. I finally found it though. My apologies for not discovering it sooner.

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      5. Happy you found it! WP gremlins indeed 😁 Indoors parks are for bad weather. If the weather was better, they wouldn’t be as popular. And cold weather lowers the immune system which makes kids (and parents) get sick often…. though germs do circulate in those indoors parks too! For example, one day last winter one of our boys came home from daycare with wet shoes and socks. He had been playing outdoors at daycare and gone in a puddle and no one noticed (he can’t speak yet either). It was below zero but the previous day had been warm so there were still some partly unfrozen puddles around. He obviously caught a cold from this, fever and all, was ill for almost a week, then his brother, then me…
        🤣

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      6. This comment again went to trash! So now I will have to check trash daily! I wonder how many comments I have lost this way? Darn Gremlins! Sorry to hear about the wet socks and the little guy’s illness. Of course staying in wet socks would be enough to make him sick. As for sharing his viral illness with his brother and you, Oh gosh, Snow, I feel for you at this time because there is no escaping it. I became so very ill for a while when my two boys were young, I seemed to have a cold/chest infection/pneumonia constantly. Fevers and chills with even a little cold. So virulent are kid’s germs. This is why I could never work for an extended period of time in a children’s ward, when I was a nurse. (Many moons ago). Every time my kids were sick, they just wanted cuddles and of course, they sneeze all over Mum and Mum has to wipe their noses. It is pretty unavoidable, but it does get better. Just give them a little while to grow and things do get better. I can see that the cold weather does have its down sides, when you have little kids, even though I love it so much. Are you ever bringing them over to Australia for a visit?

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    1. We are, well I am, fed up with summer, but Spring has this sense of renewal, a milder version. Our September, (Springtime) can give you warm days, and plenty of sun, but it doesn’t have the bite and awful humidity that summer carries. That makes it enjoyable. Warmth we can deal with, high heat and high humidity make it pretty difficult to breath. So feelings of spring are very welcome. I will go over and check out yours! Thanks for being a loyal contributor, Manja. ❤

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    2. It is true, Vero! They are heard down here, particularly if you have many friends in the North! So happy to have more Northern hemispherians like you participate. Any signs of Spring in your region?

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  8. Happy Autumn for those of you in the “Deep South”! I also hope Australia is recovering as best as possible from those dual cyclones, Trevor and Veronica. It’s bad enough when one massive storm hits; it’s even worse if two hit at the same time.

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    1. Thank you, Alejandro. I never thought of us being in the deep south! Haha! But we are! Although one could think of another connotation to that idiom with the gun control debate raging around the world, at the moment. Just to clarify with the cyclones: Northern Australians face the prospect of cyclones for the duration of the cyclone season, which is about 5 months every year. We can be somewhat philosophical about it. Our houses are cyclone proof, and most of us know what to do to protect one’s house and manage cyclonic winds when they hit, so it is only the older buildings or farms that suffer damage. The flooding that follows the cyclone effects the most damage, usually to all structures. Thanks for your kind wishes.

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  10. Lovely sunflowers. I took part this week with a post on pansies I bought just today. They are purple and yellow with the whiskers of a cat, and yes, they are glorious. I can’t wait to get them into pots.

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  16. I know what you mean by smiling at sunflowers.They really do have that effect – on me too, MyDustyflipFlops. I took so many photos of that sunflower garden so I could remember the effect it had on me. In such an industrial environment as Changi airport was, it was so delightful to see the sunflowers turning their heads towards the equatorial sun, and be so well tended and lush. I spent as much time as I could that day, in the Changi Airport Sunflower Garden, despite the oppressive heat and humidity on the rooftop.

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    1. HI Bondelsgedagtes. The term ‘Down Under’ refers to Australia. Because we are down under the bottom of the earth – that is if you position the earth the way everyone thinks “up” is. There are some that dispute the world map – Australians with a sense of humour and we position the world map upside downn – so there we are up on top of the world.! haha! Lol

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    1. I do get it. I don’t feel it myself but can appreciate the joy of that season. I think you need to live through very cold or long winters in order to exhibit this nice spring ‘mania.’ Whereabouts in the world are you?

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      1. For the past few years, we have lived in the northern part of the state of Indiana in the USA. Not too far from Chicago, IL. We definitely get the four seasons here and a lot of lake effect snow during the winter from winds coming across Lake Michigan. So yes, we do get excited about spring.

        I am originally from Texas, where we generally had warm temps in fall and winter, hot in spring, and VERY HOT and humid during the summer. 😊

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      2. Oh so you know what it is like in summer where I live. Brisbane sounds very Texan! The lake effect snow is a term I have not heard before, but as I like snow, it sounds nice.

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      3. Lake effect snow is caused by cold air passing over warm water of a lake. This is a common occurrence on our Great Lakes areas. When it happens here, it can dump a lot of snow in a short period of time and create some hazards. Thinking I would enjoy a visit to Brisbane. 😊

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    1. Yellow works well with gray and white colours, Sabine. That might be why they are so light, bright and airy. Thanks for joining in. Your photo of the hummingbird and Camellia bush is really worth a look.

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      2. Not at all, Sabine! It is sunny and bright. The winter only lasts about 6 weeks and the days are as warm as 75 degrees. (20’s in celsius). But the nights are very cool and there is still a lot of winter flus around. It is also very very dry in winter. No rain at all. 😦

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    1. That must be fun to watch, Xenia. Especially as they are wild creatures in their natural habitat. I once studied Ducks and their habits for a University subject, which involves documenting their behaviour over a series of weeks. It turned out to be far more interesting than I thought it would. You will have to keep me updated on their progress.

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      1. Thank you dear Amanda, that sounds like a fun project! 🙂🦆 I documented a full year in the swan’s lives and their cygnets through photographs and poems on my blog and am doing this again as the natural cycle continues 🙂💖 xxx

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      3. Yes, I learned a lot by watching them closely and it’s lovely to see how the swans raise their young 💜 xxx

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      5. The parents stay together and the cygnets departed one by one when they were around nine months old. One, who had been very spirited and independent from the start, had left a month earlier. Most of the cygnets joined other flocks of juveniles before looking for a partner and starting their own nesting season 🙂

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    1. It is totally okay to still post for our Friendly Friday feature. In fact we don’t have a deadline at all. So no dramas. I will pop over and check your post shortly.

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    1. It is totally okay to post. We don’t have any deadlines for Friendly Friday. I thought I replied to you earlier, but the net connection must have dropped out, as I see no reply here.

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