Cherry plum revisited

It occurred to me today that as our pink cherry plum is now flowering, the white variety that grows wild in the hedgerows around the village must be too, so I took the macro lens and went to look. I was, sadly, a little late: the recent storms have ravaged the blossom, and even as I was searching the trees for undamaged flowers (precariously balanced on the top of a steep bank, with cars whizzing past just behind me), petals were swirling around me like confetti with each gust of wind.

In the end I retreated to the safety of the garden and photographed our own cherry plum again. This is the same tree - and in fact, the same branch - as in Saturday's post, but shot with a background of choisya foliage instead of the neighbours' fence. Using the macro allowed me to get in much closer, and has produced a different kind of image. In fact I was almost too close: because of the wind I was holding the branch still with my left hand while operating the camera with my right, but in order to compose the shot with some negative space around the blossom I had to stretch out as far as possible with my left arm, and lean quite a long way backwards with the camera. It must have looked rather odd, but I think I'm allowed to behave oddly on my own property. I certainly do while I'm out and about.

After all this excitement I brought myself back down to earth with some gardening (eeurgh) - taking care, of course, to leave all my rubbish lying in the middle of the lawn as evidence for R (who was out enjoying himself at the time) that I'd been slaving over a hot pair of loppers all afternoon, and not doing photography. This evening I've been in Pershore practising Brahms, and loving it.