Spring is coming

Of all the plants in Australia, the wattle is the one I have the strongest love/hate relationship with. Most of the year it's a slightly bedraggled looking tree, uninteresting except for when it scatters obnoxious seeds all over the yard and makes you bitch about how messy and rundown the place looks and why won't you sweep it all up and you had better do it soon because any minute now our neighbors are going to giving us the side eye and start spreading rumors that we're carnies.

Ahem.

Anyway, this is the saving grace of the wattle - for just a few months every year, it turns into this:

Just look at this. It's so deliciously cheerful, even on a dreary winter day:

It's so dreamy and soft, so cozy, it nearly makes you forget that it's below freezing outside:

Look at these tiny, exquisitely dainty little flowers:

I like to look at the tree and think about the spring it heralds: the lazy days, the bees gathering pollen, the warm breezes, frolicking in meadows (something I never get around to, somehow). Then five seconds later I run inside shrieking to Ben about how the cold is going to make my ears freeze and fall off and make myself cozy on the couch with a mug of coffee that is possibly just a wee bit Irish.

I can only take so much nature.