Patriotic Sky View Trees Nature's Sparklers

The leaf buds come in as little nubby red tufts all over the branches.  They are like tiny sparklers just waiting to ignite into something exciting and eyecatching. I've been watching the tree for a week.  A few days before this photo was taken, the red buds were much smaller.   When the buds grow out, the leaves are green, not red.  Autumn makes the leaves brown and crunchy, and we wait for a little rain to make raking easier as this is a big tree and there are about 40 black bags (the big ones) to fill to overflowing with downed leaves. 

I waited for a blue sky with a white cloud or two to take this photo.  We have few sunny days here, and all I could do was try to focus and take a few photos.  The sun glare blocked out my lcd viewer so I was nicely surprised to get this photo.

This patriotic sky view made me think of the flags of other nations.  As it turns out, Red, White, and Blue is the most popular color combo in flags.  Some other countries with these colors include:  Chile, Australia, Cuba, France, Netherlands, Cambodia, Taiwan, and the UK.

We are back into the 30's in the daytime and the 20's at night.  But, Spring will be arriving here, any day, come on, we're waiting...