A few days before the official arrival of spring, crocuses have popped up all over the city. Here are two that appeared in Beechview.

Autumn leaves and blue skies reflected in a pond on a farm near Wexford.

A fritillary enjoys the almost overpoweringly sweet nectar of a Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) that grew at the edge of the woods in Mount Lebanon.

A tiny bright red spider (greatly magnified in the picture) skitters along a concrete driveway in Mount Lebanon.

UPDATE: Note the kind comment below identifying this creature as a red velvet mite.

After the snowiest winter in memory, a patch of crocuses makes a welcome sunny splash on a bank in Beechview.

The heavy snow broke branches and brought down cables everywhere, but in the sunlight the snow was beautiful enough to make us forget the inconveniences.

The fourth-deepest snow—about two feet in many neighborhoods—in recorded Pittsburgh history fell on February 5 and 6. The weight of the stuff brought down huge trees and cut off electric power to hundreds of thousands, some of whom are still without power three days later. (Old Pa Pitt himself is forced to post this article as a guest on someone else’s connection.) These scenes are from a woody lot in Mount Lebanon.

The snow bowed these arborvitae trees into graceful arches, although this particular sort of grace is usually unwelcome in traditional landscape planting.

This big maple tree came down across a driveway; here we see it already showing the marks of the bowsaw that some day will finish disassembling it.

It’s that time of year: pumpkins fresh from the fields, brilliant autumn leaves, and ghost lynchings. We see all of them here at Shenot Farms outside Wexford.