This is how spring starts there, where I grew up. Not only that, but it also manifests itself in various ways, differing from day to day, and I still recall a few, even though it has been over sixty years since I had these memories.

I'm already talking about a place I left sixty years ago to live in a faraway city, but I've returned on every vacation I've had.

Whenever I visit my grandparents' house, where I had a wonderful childhood, I go to the place where I spent most of my time with my friends.

Of course, it may seem like just a country road, but for me, it was a place where freedom was almost absolute, with no parents or grandparents to keep an eye on us and to forbid us certain manifestations.

Yes, it may seem like just a country road, but for us, it was no man's land —a dividing line between the village where we lived and the neighboring village, separated by a deep valley known as Glimeii Valley.

My village, Opriseni, is less visible from this position.

On the opposite side, further away, lies the village of Radaseni.

When I was a child, I wasn't particularly interested in looking around, and in the distance, we were only thinking about playing; these images of the surrounding landscape slipped into my memory.

Now, every time I arrive, I first look around and I can't get enough of the beauty of the place and, above all, of what I can't do in the city, to look at the horizon.

Although my village was and still is my love, as it is nestled between two close hills, it is not as photogenic as the neighboring village, and I was more interested in photographing this one.

This is how spring starts here...

The winter that has just departed, calendrically and astronomically, has left a landscape identical to that of the fall when it settled here.

Trees without leaves and dry grass that look nothing like spring, which, however, has come.

However, there are clear signs that spring is approaching, signs that I have recognized since childhood. Certain flowers that grow only in this valley, a yellow peony that is a rare, protected flower, though almost no one knows it.

Adonis vernalis, known variously as pheasant's eye, spring pheasant's eye, yellow pheasant's eye, and false hellebore, is a perennial flowering plant in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. It is found in dry meadows and steppes in Eurasia. More specifically, this plant grows in a wide range of locations, which include open forests, forest clearings, dry meadows, mesic steppe, and mostly calcareous soil. Source

I can say that this Adonis vernalis is a harbinger, but there are other signs, the most obvious being the flowering trees. Fewer now, only the most hasty.

The white flowers distinguish them from other dormant trees.

This is how spring begins in places where nature is still more potent than human creations.

I rely mostly on photos in all my blogs. Words don't help me as much as photos.

I always start with photos when I want to write a blog. Photos remind me of places, events, and feelings that turn into words. When I post on Photography Lovers, the words have even less importance; they serve as a companion to the photos I want to share. This often makes the story uninteresting, yet it is necessary; otherwise, the photos would merely be a series of ordinary images.

I make this statement as a plea to those reading not to overjudge the text and to focus on the photos.

A wise saying goes that a photograph is worth a thousand words, but I don't think so.

Everything depends on the beholder.