I'm No Good at Titling Things

How to begin...

I really like baby leaves:

Winter is a season that seems to come upon you all of a sudden, usually before you are ready for it, but spring is always a long time in coming. Sometimes it even feels like it's here and then something will make you feel like it's still winter. But eventually spring does seem to settle in, and it's hard to say what it is that makes that so, but for me it's sustained nice temperatures and the full blooming of the crabapple tree:

So many flowers!
We actually have 2 flowering crabapples, but this one blooms first. I am not sure if I prefer it this way, so the floweriness is prolonged, or if I would like it better to have both trees blooming together (they are right next to each other, with a stone bench in between that no one ever sits on anymore. I think tomorrow I will sit on that bench). Not that this is a matter in which I actually have a choice, so it's pointless to even speculate. Why am I even speculating on this?

There are other things beginning to bloom in the yard now, too:

Dogwood - Just starting to bloom. I am allergic, so having taken this picture I will now be keeping my distance.

Jack-in-the-pulpit.

Here's Jack.

Not everything is in bloom yet, so I can still give you a Backyard Bud of the Day:

Canada mayflower. It blooms in May. At some point.

I am spending a lot more time on plants than bugs here on my bug blog lately, but once everything leafs out there will be more bugs in the yard and on the blog. Or at least the plants will become somewhat less interesting, or will be featured mainly because they have bugs on them.

So here's the Backyard Bug of the Day - on a leaf!

I have no idea what it is, but it kind of reminds me of popsicles. Visually; I did not taste it.

This little bug wanted some attention:

That is, it wanted some attention until I tried to take its picture. As far as I am concerned, if you are going to be crawling on me, you have to agree to have your picture taken.

I'll give you one more bug today (I am holding back because some of the other bugs I saw today are sure to make their appearance in the yard many more times in the coming months, and I don't want to use up everything at once):

Really tiny possible caterpillar (it could be some other kind of larva). Sometimes caterpillars will spend days, if not their entire caterpillarhood, on the same plant, so I'll try to find it again tomorrow. It's fun to be able to monitor the progress of these things...

Okay, you know what time it is - time to avert your eyes, arachnophobes! I've got a couple of arachnid appreciation pics for you!

Look away now.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Though they are kind of cute, so you might want to look...
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This one is chowing down on another spider...

Here's a nice zoom/crop closeup. And a story about this spider! This is some kind of jumping spider. When you get in close to look at them they tend to try to keep their eyes (of which they have many) on you, but they will also sometimes scoot around whatever they are sitting on to get out of your sight. When they do that I can sometimes coax them back around into camera view by moving my hand toward them so they want to scoot away from it. I tried that today (and almost actually got a picture of my finger near the spider) when the spider decided to take a different tack and jumped. Onto my finger. In spite of my interest in bugs and spiders I still sometimes have that "EEK! There's a bug on me!" reaction. I had a little big of that this time and pulled my hand away. The spider was still attached to this leaf by a line of silk, so it came off my hand right away, in a bungee kind of way. Anyway, that's why I only got one shot of this spider, and not so close up.

Anyway, it makes this kind of funny:

I did this crossword on my iPod the other day, and had a bit of a chuckle over 60 across. And then had that reaction today.
It could have been worse. Sometimes the jumping spiders go for the camera - or the head.