The peach blossoms were blooming, soft pinks, whites, and reds bringing life to the tans, browns, and muted greens of winter.
This display is always brief.
Some years it lasts a few weeks, others only seven to ten days. Its shortness is part of the anticipation, something noticed more carefully because it will not stay.
That evening, the air was warm for winter. We walked slowly through the orchard, stopping often. Some trees were still dark and sculptural, their branches bare. Others were already dotted with blossoms, scattered like confetti along their limbs.
Bees moved steadily from flower to flower, calm and focused in their work. Even for those of us who tend to be nervous around them, their presence felt grounding. They are a reminder that life was already in motion, already responding to the season.
Nothing was rushed. There was no sense of trying to capture the moment before it disappeared, only of being present with it while it was here.
These images were made in that space of unknowing.
Not as a promise of what the season would bring, but as a quiet acknowledgment of what existed then — open, hopeful, and alive.
