We had rare Pacific-Northwest February sunshine today, and girded our loins for some serious pruning and cleaning. I took pictures and was editing them and thought “decent, but I had pictures of spring flowers (some of the same ones) this time last year.” Then I realized that was stupid; do I not look at this year’s flowers because I saw last year’s? And there are people who are living in places where winter is probably starting to wear ’em down again who might be cheered by a preview of what they’ll be seeing in a few weeks. So herewith the same old crocuses and daffodils, but this story has a pretty severe barb to it. [Update: Identified the mystery flower, worth checking out.]
Let’s start with the crocuses, probably over-photographed in this space just because they delight the eye so intensely in that sideways spring sunshine. The first one has a mystery white flower coming up front, I don’t recall us having any white crocuses but we’ll know soon. It wasn’t that bright in that corner, you can see a little grain from pushing it to ISO400 which actually kind of pleases my eye. The white was really that white to the human eye, not just the CCD.
That second crocus, it really looks a lot like a couple of pictures from last spring, but even so might well be worth your clicking on for a closer look.
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[The next day] Yes, that anonymous white flower was a crocus! Mmmm, tasty.
Moving on to the daffodils... the first shot has the flowers themselves a bit out of focus but I thought the background was the picture anyhow. As for the second, well, towards the end of a long Northern-Hemisphere winter you just can’t possibly concentrate too much sunshine and colour into a picture although this one may be at the limit.
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Oh yes, the pointy bit. There it is below; I was pruning the roses (should have been done three weeks ago when we were in Oz) and as usual in this process, it cost me some flesh wounds and at least one drop of my heart’s blood stained the good earth, how romantic. Even so, the kid piped up to say “Daddy, why did you say ‘#%&!$’?”
