It's hot and humid in Kyoto now, so I'd like to try to cool off by returning to the quintessential pleasantness of Kyoto's spring.

The image above was made by applying the same Photoshop "Darken" blend-mode technique that I used to create the Color of Kyoto foliage desktop background last fall, but this time to a pair of pictures I took during a cherry-blossom outing in April.

Links below the picture are to desktop-sized images in both widescreen and standard versions.

Unlike the previous time where I used three pictures, I used only two this time. Also, instead of [...]

While viewing the amazing cherry blossoms in northern Kyoto last month, despite all the attention on the blossoms, there were plenty of other botanical signs of spring, and I took a moment away from the blossoms to enjoy them as well.

In an earlier post, I showed some of Kyoto's brilliant spring colors, but those of today's posts are a bit more subtle. Among the weeds around the little river that flowed through the area were a number of different flowers....

Out of focus behind the white flower above were scraggly bushes with pink blossoms of some kind or another....

On the same evening we took our family self portrait among the cherry blossoms, Anthony enjoyed his new bubble machine. He hadn't played with it since the day we had a nice hanami drive, and so was really in the mood to bubble.

(In the background, you can see Fumie and the bench on which we took the self portrait)

We're leaving for a trip to Hokkaido this evening. Will bring the bubbler....

Imagine taking 10 gallons of white and pink blossoms, and forcefully shoving them onto a branch capable of holding at most half that amount, and that's the feeling you currently get from two trees in my neighborhood.

I don't know what kind of trees these are. If they are cherry trees, they're blooming long after all the other cherry trees in this neighborhood.

Update: thanks to Aaron and Andy for identifying them as "yaezakura" or "botanzakura" cherry blossoms.

These blossoms range from almost pure white to a mildly deep, rich pink, often the whole range being found on [...]

My blog has been filled with nothing but cherry blossoms for the past week or so, because for the last week or so most cherry trees around here have been hitting their blossom peak. The timing of blooming, though, is certainly not coordinated among Japan's cherry trees.

According to Julia's Kitakami Photoblog, the blossoms aren't even close to making their appearance there. Kitakami is a town about 415 miles north-east of Kyoto, and can be quite a bit colder than here.

Even locally, the cherry-blossom season varies considerably. The other day we drove a bit north into the mountains, and [...]