Shimmering

I had a busy day today, but thoroughly enjoyable.

This morning I met a friend for coffee, and we put the world to rights for a very pleasant hour and a half. Then, after finding new parking, I ran some errands, before meeting R for lunch and putting the world to rights all over again. Then home to whip through some administrative chores, before a pack walk around the village, and an hour in front of the amusing televisual tosh that is Ripper Street.

R had pointed out to me yesterday that there were some lovely echinops in a garden on the other side of the village, and I'd hoped that the light would be nice for photographing them this evening. In fact it was fierce - summer has returned today, which of course is exactly what we've all been craving here for the past couple of weeks, but this garden faces due west, and the evening sun was reflecting off the flower heads and making things tricky for the camera. The operator didn't help by deciding to stop up - shallow dof is all very well, but in this case I think a narrower aperture would have been better - but you live and learn.

The evening sunlight certainly wasn't deterring the bees - the whole patch of echinops was covered with them, with several at a time on some of the larger heads. My bee-identification skills aren't all that great, but I think this is a buff-tailed bumblebee. In any case, I like the fact that both echinops and bee are almost shimmering in the strong, low light, and I hope you do too.

Many thanks to BikerBear for her challenge Flower Friday - though it looks as though she's off on a mission again, so the challenge may be running itself this week!