Red maples....

Also called swamp maples are among our earliest bloomers here on the Cape and are the trees that give our landscape that lovely pinkish glow early in the spring. 

These flowers have pretty much gone by already and you can see the little "helicopter" seeds beginning to form. Soon the ground will be covered with them.

Red maples are native to the Cape, unlike many of the other maples we now see here such as the ubiquitous Norway Maple. The red maples like to have their feet wet, as they say, so you often find them in damp swampy places, giving them their other common name, swamp maple.

If you used to climb a tree and sit on a big limb out over the water while reading a book, this was probably the tree you sat in. Every time I pass one of these big old trees overhanging a quiet pond I think of climbing up and just daydreaming the rest of the day away....