This flower is called "Setsubun-so" in Japan. "Setsubun" is February 3rd and is regarded as the day before the calendrical beginning of spring. "so" means grass in Japanese. This flower is in bloom around Setsubun and therefore the name "Setsubun-so" was given.
The flower is very small, 5cm in height and 2cm in flower diameter, and I had to place my camera on the ground to take photos here. It's hard work for me to arrange composition with camera on the ground level, but it was pleasure to see charming flowers through the finder.

	Setsubun-so with morning dew. They hang down their head in the early morning, but the sunshine dries dew over, they will look up and.....
	...open their arms wide and start singing for the sky.
	In the daytime, every flowers are singing together. It's chorus of Eranthis / Setsubun-so.
	Setsubun-so is tend to bloom under chestnut trees. So chestnut was sometimes found besides the flowers. You can see how small the flowers are in comparison with the chestnut.
	The small...small flower was taken with Canon MP-E65mm F2.8 Macrophoto lens at magnification of 2.5. White parts look like petals are actually calyces. Yellow parts are actual petals though they look like stamina. Actual stamina and pistils are together in the center of flowers in light blue and purple respectively.

I visited a garden park on a hill looking for plum flowers. Unfortunately there was no plum flower in bloom but remaining snow instead. I took several photos with Tamron Macro Lens aiming at creating pictures like vast snowfield. However, actual are of remaining snow was a few square meters. It was the first time for me to take photos of snow and I have learned much about exposure technique and colors of snow and shadow.

A shape of thaw	A Leaf	Micro Snowfield
Remaining snow on a small garden tree. At the edge, snow created various shapes and thawed out.	Snow surface around the leaf is dented maybe because the leaf collects warmness of the sun light. Shape created by nature is gentle, isn't it?	Scenery looks like big snow desert but actually it is a small world mere 20 cm of width. The lowest possible camera position created the scenery.

One day in February 2001 I went for photo shooting of Sunrise to a top of a mountain. It was a extremely cold day for the area besides Setonaikai-sea know as warm place, and the external temperature gauge of my car indicated at minus 6 degrees centigrade. After sunrise I left there for home but just after a minute driving, I found a pond which was frozen over. I parked my car besides the pond and, of course, took photos.

Mystery Circle	Rippling Wave of Ice	Winter into Spring
A Shape of Warmth	Geometric Pattern