Midsummer's day

.. and the hoverflies are ... hovering.

This flower - a Californian Marigold - is unfeasibly orange. Something strange happens to one's eyes when looking at it. It's so bloody orange.* In most of my pictures, I've had to desaturate the image otherwise it's just too much. However, the hoverflies love it and keep returning. The flower has the most beautiful stamen and, er, other bits, which silhouette themselves against the delicately thin petals if you look from the outside in.

It's taken me three years to grow this one flower ....!

* too orangey for crows