I don't like flowers. They have their place, of course. They look good in vases and there wouldn't be seeds without them. But when I think about what I like to have around me - it's bark and leaves. Between them, it's hard to choose. My first instinct was to plump for leaves. Then I thought about trees in winter. They look just as good as their summer selves so maybe my final, finely tuned decision is in favour of bark. Though I feel uncomfortable with it because leaves and stems are what I like to take photos of and I'm always moved by the little hairs that show up in pictures but which we rarely notice otherwise - and the veins and wrinkles and shapes that we may examine from time to time, or be startled by when the sun shines through them but which, most days, we ignore. (Of course we do. We none of us have time to work through a forest, leaf by leaf.)
It's a funny time of year for flowers round where I live. The burst of spring yellows and blues is over. Alexanders are tipping, as is the Hawthorn (May). Sloes and apples are clearly in place. Indeed, sloes are already their full size - though green. Thus, we have autumn embedded in summer.
Locally, tall, white, umbrels are what catch my eye most. Some are lovely. On others, the individual flowerlets are so densely packed they resemble nothing more than sickly cow pats on sticks; or perhaps white picnic plates.
Rape plants gone wild stand out splendidly from the dull, decaying mess and then there are buttercups - I like buttercups.
And the problem, for me, is exacerbated because I find yellow and white hard to photograph.
White flowers lose definition and yellow glares back so glaringly, images of petals get splodged with horrid white patches.
There are masses of garden bloggers who show white and yellow flowers, apparently without difficulty, but for me it's a labour. And for someone who doesn't even like flowers much, who prefers leaves and stems - it isn't even a labour of love.
So . . . in this post . . . I'm getting it over with. A flower post of white and yellow flowers which took hours to construct because I kept having to go and try again until any showed up at all.
I hope you enjoy it.
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And you might like to tell me (and each other) - are you a flower person or someone who would you prefer to kneel in long grass and peer up at its seed heads against a blue, blue sky?
