Redbuds on a gray morning

Thundergust Mill Rd., Warrington Township, York county PA

Redbud trees are in full color on Roundtop. Redbuds are not flowering trees, though they appear as such at first look. The red literally is a leaf bud that will soon turn green. When that happens the trees lose all their splendor and look like something that is diseased and broken and should be cut down. Which, I suspect, is what happens to some of them when overeager brush clearers are at work once the buds turn to leaves.

Redbud favor sunny field and forest edges, so I don’t have any right around my cabin. I am too deep into the forest for them, though the bottom on my lane, where the forest ends, has several of them.

Splindly and misshapen as the trees are, they look like a natural, more full-sized version of a bonsai tree. The trunks and branches take on their own S-shapes, without help from a master gardener.

Today, the redbud are at their most brilliant for the year, but the morning is gray and a touch foggy. Professional photographers would gnash their teeth, hoping for good lighting to match the redbud’s peak.

I am more interested in documenting the natural year in whatever lighting presents itself. Better lighting would be nice, but the redbud peak won’t wait for that. Too many professional photographs look garish to me and seem to reflect the photographer more than the world as I see it. I’m not convinced we do people with limited experience of the natural world any favors by showing nature in ways that don’t look natural. Nature is not Disneyland. Nature should be experienced as it is, for how else can we reach any level of understanding of it?