What’s this? Am I channeling Gerard Manley Hopkins? Well, in thinking of an appropriate title for this blog post I didn’t think the great Jesuit poet would object if I borrowed the opening line of one of his best-loved poems. It seems appropriate if for no other reason than that the images I’m about to share with you illustrate the truth of that statement: “Nothing is so beautiful as spring.”

I was just sharing these pictures with the readers of my photo blog and describing how I processed the images. I’ll spare you those details — just thought you might enjoy seeing the beauty of the Northern Catskills in the second week of May, a time of year whose color to me is second only to fall. In fact my son, Anton, once referred to spring as “pre-fall.”

The first two images are actually completely separate photos and not two different versions of the same original. If you’d like to comment, I’d be interested in hearing which of the two you prefer.