Spring in the Marsh

I've decided to start a series of posts about the marsh we have in our back yard.  See yesterday's post for the start of the series.

For Macro Monday I went searching for the start of spring in the marsh.  The tide was high during the day so I had to stay up on the pier.  But right as the yard transitions to the marsh we have a handful of trees that hang over the pier.  The Hackberry in this area is starting to leaf-out and has flowers.  The flowers will turn into little berries by late summer (I'll have to see if I have any good pictures of them from past years for a future post).  The berries are quite small, BB-sized, with a large seed in the middle.  But the little flesh that is on them is quite sweet.  The raccoons in the marsh seem to really like them as do we.  In late summer we often grab a few as we walk by. 

Hackberry flowers

This tree has some odd behavior as well.  There are two trunks that grow up together.  We are not sure if it is two trunks of the same tree or two trees that grew together early on.  The later might be the case as the second one always seems to leaf-out a bit later.  But here is a picture of the leaf buds.  Enjoy.

Hackberry leaf buds