flower photography – Page 11 – don't confuse the narrator

aspirations

For no particular reason, the rosebay willow herb is one of my favourite summer flowers. The name is one I remember learning as a child, along with so many other pink and purple blooms: meadow crane’s-bill, mallow, cosmos, buddleia…

I haven’t spent much time in the UK over the last 20 years and I am struck now by the willow herb spires lining the river banks and towering above the long grasses in the fields and meadows.

There seems to be something very aspirational – and inspirational – about how they point to the blue sky: I get the impression they are telling me there is no limit to the possibilities.

A closer look reveals a host of insects busy among the flowers: a reminder that without hard work ambition may count for nothing.

Close up of honey bee on rosebay willow herb flower.

poppies

I don’t suppose these giant orange poppies are indigenous to the UK, and I certainly can’t imagine they grew in the Forest of Arden, which once surrounded the area where the photo was taken.

Even so, the straggling clump by the gate of this traditional thatched cottage was utterly glorious and deserved a better photo than I could manage with my phone.

This morning when I went out I had my camera with me:

lost in translation

Sadly, the utter magnificence and glory of this rhododendron has been lost in my attempt to translate it into a photograph.

I, too, am – or should be – lost in translation, as I have a deadline approaching at a worrying rate of knots.

pockets & bonnets

Among the papers I was sorting last week, there were poems and fragments of poetry I had lost sight of. There were also titles.

Sometimes, like Wendy Cope and her Making Cocoa for Kinglsey Amis, you know that a phrase deserves to be recorded. You don’t know if it will be a line in a poem or a title, but it strikes a chord of some sort. I walked around with the phrase “the inevitability of dragons” in my head for years before I found the poem it belonged in and I still hope to use it as the title for a collection one day.

One of the phrases I (re-)found last week was “On the topology of pockets.” I’m sure it’s the title of a poem, but that poem remains unwritten. When I tried, it morphed into something else entirely.
Continue reading “pockets & bonnets”

spring lamb with floral trimmings

It’s Bank Holiday weekend. Not May Day weekend, as it should be; nor yet “Spring bank holiday”, as I thought it might be. It’s simply “Early May bank holiday”, an anodyne phrase with no dangerous political connotations to offend or inspire.

It poured with rain half the night and is still damp and unappealing outdoors and uninspiring indoors, so I thought I’d brighten things up with some recent photos.