Finally, summer

I like rain because it spills color over pavements and polishes the world with puddles and reflections; because it's moody, like me; because it nourishes everything and makes the planet lush and green; and because it never feels like needles running from the eye to the brain, as bright sun does. But even I get a little tired of rain by June. Today we had our second sunny day in a row, so I decided it was time for me to see the iris gardens I've been planning to see every summer since I moved here five years ago. I felt selfish not offering to take anyone with me, but I needed the silence of my own company. I almost didn't take the camera.

One of the rules of Contemplative Photography, which has so far never led me wrong, is that if you're going to a flower garden, you should leave your camera at home. Karr and Wood are honest and direct about this: it's almost impossible to do anything fresh with flowers. It's all been done before and done better, if not by the great masters then certainly by the impressionists and more recently by Georgia O'Keeffe and Christopher Beane.

But I am nothing if not foolish, so I took the camera, and predictably, I took pictures that are derivative, corny, predictable, and clichéd. I tried to find flowers that were slightly past their prime, that were a bit blown and overdone, that were flawed and torn. I went for odd angles. I didn't add saturation (in fact for a few shots I reduced the saturation because it was almost headache-making, all that color). I had fun playing with aperture, foreground, and background. I couldn't help loving the shapes and textures, and the light at the end of the day just knocked me out. I took a few hundred pictures, and of those, I was unable to delete twenty-one. Here's one, and the other twenty (if you just can't stand missing them) are here. Now I think I've got that out of my system for this year.

Comment from Ceridwen: "Kind of like open heart surgery without the blood."