sam2cents' photostream  

A Small Tortoiseshell just out of hibernation... my first butterfly this year. This one is very fresh looking, so must have hatched out late last summer, or early autumn, and gone into hibernation almost immediately. We were still seeing butterflies on the wing in early November last year, mostly these ones.

Frogs do get it wrong sometimes, and their spawn ends up frozen solid in ice, but in the last few years they've been spawning much later in the year. Here are a male and female in amplexus (the grasping of the female by the male) and surrounding by spawn, at Baltinglass, a town on the other side of the Wicklow Mountains. Happy Spring everyone!

Jupiter, Venus and the Moon, form top left to bottom right.

Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey.

Inside the beautiful sweet shop on the main street in Greystones. One of my favourite places on this earth...

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of dancing Daffodils;
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

(Wordsworth's original version)

It's that wonderful time of the year again. They are everywhere. What a spring this is!