Stone Mountain in early March

 So many things are blooming: wisteria, jasmine, honeysuckle, azalea.

The pollen count topped 1,000 particles per square meter the other day. Cars are coated with it, and so are the bees. You see clouds of bees, wasps and flies.

People here seem to take the piedmont azalea (Rhododendron canescens) as the icon of spring. It’s got light pink blossoms. But there are so many varieties of azaleas here that I’m just leaving them all in genus Rhododendron for a while.

We ran across a blooming thicket of azalea bushes that covered almost 1,000 square feet of the forest. That’s the size of a cottage in the old neighborhood.  These plants had a much darker flower than the piedmont azaleas that the locals pointed out to me. The color reminded me of a persimmon.

The variation in color is just one part of the puzzle.

You see azaleas in the forest and in yards, and I wonder how the cultivated and wild varieties — if you can even make that distinction — react with each other. I wonder whether some varieties were cultivated to be early bloomers and whether some of those traits have shown up the in forest.

You see dogwoods and redbuds in the forest and in yards. Some of the dogwoods have bloomed, shed their blooms and are have leaves. Some are just beginning to bloom.