Surprise!

I still have piles of snow in my yard.  Granted, they are mere shadows of their former 12 and 15 foot high selves, but nonetheless, they're snow.

In my almost daily travels north to pick up roadside litter, I have watched the transition from winter to spring creep along.  There's a definite hue of light green on formerly bare trees, but I still have snow in my yard.  Earlier this month, we had new snow fall several days in a row.

Considering all that, this evening I drove down to Tern Lake to take photos of ducks, if any were close enough to the shore.  I spotted what appeared to be loons far out on the lake.  I parked, rolled down the window, and turned on my camera.

Suddenly:

The photo took away my breath.  It's summer.

Oh, yeah, the loons were out there.  This shot of one used up all my available telephoto so it isn't clear.

Closer in, a mallard couple:

And, a first for me at Tern Lake, a red-necked grebe:

Armed with the knowledge that it was summer at Tern Lake, I went home a looked a little closer at my own yard.

This wild shooting star is going to bloom any day and it's still too early to transplant annuals.

Shooting star buds.

On the north side of the house, the wild ferns are sprouting.

 

And the pansies from a couple years ago have reseeded themselves again.  In fact, one has already bloomed, a little viola-sized bloom, but still--the snow just left here last week.

Ah, well, there are some healthier looking pansies about to bloom.

Down south, my friend Shirley has flowers all over her yard.  In Arizona, I imagine everything's dried up by now.

Here in Moose Pass, I still have snow in my yard.

In Alaska, summer waits for no man.  It's going on 11 PM as I write this.  It's still daylight here.  The sprinklers are watering the brownish-green lawn.  I just went for a walk with the neighbors on each side of me in warm sunlight.  I can count the goats on the mountain with my naked eye.

Super telephoto here.

It's summer, snow or no snow.