Hanami has started!

Last week, I started getting excited about hanami and the budding of the sakura (cherry) trees. Well, they're still budding, but the ume (plum) trees have already started blooming. We went for a walk on the weekend and found some in the park near our house.

They're pretty from afar.

Also up close.

And there are more on the way!

Interestingly, although the plum trees are still in the process of blooming, some of the flowers have started to break apart. It was hard to capture with my camera, but when the wind blew, a few petals would come off the trees. In the first picture, you can probably see some petals on the ground as well.

There are some other trees that were starting to produce flowers in the park. It's possible that they're dogwoods, but neither of us were sure.

Totally different flowers!

While the flowering trees are really quite nice, there were also some interesting fungi on some other trees in a more forested area of the park which are beautiful in their own way too.

Red shelf-like fungus on a tree limb. 

Dense concentration of some white fungus.

While we'd visited the park near our house before, we hadn't really explored it too much. We found that it's much bigger than it seems and contains a surprisingly large number of paths. The forested area was also surprisingly large and nice.