It has been a rocky road to spring since we returned to Michigan from a month in North Carolina. We expected some cold while in North Carolina in February and I think it got down to the high 30s some nights – but we hardly noticed except for putting an extra blanket on our bed. After all, it was colder in Michigan. As the month progressed the daffodils started blooming, flowering trees exploded with color, and I had a pot of pansies by our entrance.

And flowers were beginning to bloom in Old Salem and the Salem College campus.

We visited the Reynolda Gardens of Wake Forest University where beds were being prepared for summer plantings, seeded beds were labeled, and spring flowers were blooming. It made me eager to return to my garden in Michigan to start my spring “cleaning.”

The road that I (and my camera) take are not always well planned out and when I do plan, I don’t always end up with the images I had imagined. For the 78th year in a row, the road to spring in Michigan took me by surprise. Even though I suffered through another change to daylight savings time and the Vernal Equinox is just three days away, March is still acting more like winter than spring.

The Lens-Artist Photo Challenge this week is “The Road Most Often Taken,” in other words John is asking us about our favorite subject to photograph. I have a hard time resisting flowers, and I have suffered mightily during my winter of exile in Michigan (is that a bit over-dramatic?) so until the flowers are blooming here in the north, my camera is taking a loooooong-winter’s nap on the shelf.