Figure 1 – The chartreuse moment – willows leafing out, April 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

It is April. It is New England. For the last couple of weeks I have been eying the willows.  Even before the snow melted there were signs of life in their buds. They are the first to leaf in spring and the last to drop their leaves in the fall.  I caught this pair yesterday.  They are harbingers of a very special moment among the seasons.  Trees do not just turn green. First there is a short, chromatically warm, and spectacular season of chartreuse. And even today the color of this pair of willows is just a bit more mundane shade of green.

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens hand-held at 81 mm, ISO 400, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/400th sec at f/18.0 with – 1 exposure compensation.