Horse Chestnut Tree (amazing and beautiful)

The Horse Chestnut is one my most favorite trees. We have one on the corner of the property—next to the barn and between the house and the sheep pastures. I've watched it this spring. It's an amazing beauty—first creating tight, perfect, delicately-almost-oriental-type buds, opening up to soft and amazing florals (pictured below) which rise up in soft yellow cone-type forms (which attract the bees!), and finally...in just three to five days...morphing into these prickly, craggy, spiky homes for seeds. Such a lovely evolution. Such a contrast in textures, colors.... I will continue to watch this tree through the summer, fall and winter.