Looking for beauty

Today has been an experience where I have wanted to spend a bit of dedicated time with nature to appreciate the beauty and delicacy life. My eyes were drawn to a 'Forest Pansy' tree, also sometimes known as a Judas tree. This tree has had the look of a sapling for the last 3 years or so but it is now starting to enter a growth spurt with it's large waxy red leaves. I took this shot of a leaf from the underside with some sunlight in the background, the light was reflected off lots of green shiny leaves nearby which I think gave a blue/green tinge. I've turned up the contrast to make it a bit more abstract. I am hoping the weather may perk up for a few more weeks so that summer doesn't feel incredibly short this year :-)

"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow."

Hermann Hess