Last week Anke wrote, “Der Frühling ist so schnell. Man kommt nicht hinterher. Man muss genau gucken und sich sagen, das ist nur heute so. Und dann ein Foto machen.” (Spring is so fast. You can’t keep up. You have to take a good look and tell yourself, it’s only like this today. And then take a picture.)
I had just been thinking the same thing, but hadn’t put it into words so well. It seems that one day it was still cold, then suddenly came a weekend as warm as summer, and the sun shone through trees that were still naked, having not had time to put on their spring leaves. Then I blinked and the crocuses and snowdrops were past, and one tree after another was exploding in white or yellow or pink blooms while tulips popped up all around. The trees lining my street looked great with just little mini-leaves in bright lime green. Yet I didn’t have or make the time to go photographing, and last week I realized that I’d missed the catching the full bloom of spring in this project, at least for this year.
But the last spring blooms are still to be seen. Even famous Berliners seem to appreciate them. I saw Knut contemplating them today in the zoo.
urban plant research 
Nice you picked up this sentence – it moved me. And time so goes by. As if every day there is a new explosion. Everything grows so quickly (including the daughter and not-yet-born-ones…!)
I never knew Knut was grey now! Like it!
Must get my “Frühreif” project finished for Anke’s next issue. Will you be joining again?
Take care,
Jo
Ups, the daughter bit was meant for another comment, sorry! Sylee from Berlin Reified has a daughter. Sorry, sorry. But all the rest was meant for you!
I think Knut is just really dusty. He seems to like dirt a lot. Even when he was smaller, he would always be rolling around in the dirt. His enclosure is between the sun bears and the brown bears, since his parents would probably not be happy to have him around, so he doesn’t really see other polar bears. Maybe he thinks it’s normal to be brown.
What’s a sun bear?
Maybe Knut has learned to camouflage himself against the gray branches and rocks in an attempt to thwart the eyes of his many fawning onlookers? It was a long time before I even saw him in either picture!
Sara, I think you’re right… he has become the same color as his enclosure. Poor guy. I guess he was probably much happier in the winter when there was lots of snow. Then he could roll in that, and he could blend in without changing colors.
I didn’t know what a sun bear was either until I saw it. It had a nice wrinkled-up face and called a Malay Bear in German and a Sun Bear in English. Wikipedia says that in Malay, it’s called a Honey Bear! Here’s the German Wikipedia entry on sun bears, which has cuter pictures than the English page.