Dear to Me

Tricky things leaves - they always get stuck in your teeth! From 70m away I knew I was in with a chance of getting a shot even in the torrential rain.

Very very dear to me and close to my heart are the roe deer family, living in the fields around the back of our house. What is it that I find so very endearing? The big black eyes as deep as pools, the incredibly long lashes, the rather large ears, the daintiness of their gait or the fragility of the legs. The massive cuteness factor! Maybe it's a family thing wanting a mother and children to survive out in the wild against the odds. Perhaps it's their shyness and timidity, in that it's a special thing to see and to photograph them. The whole package probably.

Pouring with rain all day I was happy ecstatic to see mum and her two fawns grazing the meadow not fifty metres away. Creeping silently into our office above the garages and like soooo many times before clicked open the window and slid the beanbag onto the sill. Their ears up, especially mum's, I waited breathlessly not daring to push the lens out! The wind and driving rain helped to camouflage the noise and they soon settled as the pull of the prolific lusciously ripe blackberries pouring over the hedges was too overwhelming to stay away from them for long! Getting soaked through my heart went out to them on this awful day.

I do feel privileged to see them so close and almost be part of their lives. We've lived here twenty-six years and only in the last two have had these fortuitous encounters! Lucky me - particularly lucky for my blipping :))