Friday afternoon I decided to drive to a local park with walking trails to get a bit of fresh air. Usually I decide to drive somewhere new on a day it is 70º and sunny. It was not a sunny or warm day; it was actually quite opposite. It was cloudy and cold and there was overcast due to the chance of rain. The sky was gloomier than could be and this weather already put me in a sluggish mood, but I hoped that a walk in a new location would brighten my day a bit. As I was walking around, I was looking around to find something I have never seen before. Living in central Pennsylvania, I mostly only see green trees, green shrubs, and green bushes. Nothing too exciting. After about fifteen minutes of walking, I run into this bright, vibrant tree that caught my eye.

            When I first glanced at it, I thought to myself, “oh that is probably just the tree Professor Freeman told us not to look at”.  Then I decided to pull out my handy nature identifying app (the only good to come out of my Budburst project in lab) to figure out what kind of tree it is. After taking a few pictures, it turns out to be a Judas Tree, and I have never heard about that kind of tree before. It had a unique hot pink and magenta color on the leaves that were budding that I have never seen before. Unfortunately, with the overcast and gloomy sky, the picture is not too clear, but in person it was a nice change from the average green bush or pine tree that take up most of central Pennsylvania.