As I was scrolling through my phone’s gallery to look for a picture, I realised the focussed, colourful extent of my recent archive; an explosion of reds, yellows, blues, whites, pinks and greens; a studied documentation of all the spectacular blooms that I have been witnessing since the end of February, some of which have already disappeared, their petals dispersed by the wind.

I had been observing them advance since January, the Magnolia tree, for instance, though bare, always had this curled up, velvety node at the end of each branch. As winter began to fade, the tree began to sprout buds, forming clusters of would-be blooms. Before they broke out in Tramin they had burst into splendour in Bozen. As we drove by, we watched cherry pinks and royal purples speckle the landscape. Soon enough they arrived here in Tramin, and I went around photographing as many as I could while marvelling at their precise beauty, their fragrance, their effusiveness. I began to see how a single magnolia seemed incomplete without the company of others. It is a flower that revels in a crowd, makes sense within a cluster. It can get lost in the optics and yet retain itself, adding so much nuance to your vision of it. In fact, you never quite get to behold it as a single unit, since the petals fall off one by one and scatter on the ground below, the consequence of their lightness, perhaps. It’s not like the full-bodied thud of a vermilion silk cotton tree bloom that can hold itself across the length of a long descent from branch to earth and still, often, remain intact.