Even the flowers are depressed

I’ve had enough of winter already, thank you thank you…

It’s never really been my cuppa, even when I was a kid in the northern hemisphere in the wilds of upstate New York where the snows fell 4 feet deep and snowdays meant you got to play outside in it all day long in the middle of the week. Yeah, for me it meant the other kids would leave me alone while I curled up in bed with a book.

But that was then and this is now and there is no snow, no endless expanse of white to gaze at in the morning. Instead it’s this endless y-light, the colour of the light that manages to squeeze itself through heavy blanketing rainclouds, fat a soggy with endless drops of rain. Endlessly dreary and sad and cold and damp and, well… duh… I’m not enjoying it.

Hauled myself over to the Wintergarden in the Auckland Domain today and discovered the flowers are feeling pretty much the same as I am about the whole thing. Kinda wretched, kinda beautiful… we’ll all be happy when October gets here… but that’s sooooooooooooooo far away!

 

 

Tulip macromania

 

There oughta be a law preventing people from taking new pictures before they’ve finished developing the old ones. But… there isn’t. And I went to the tulip festival today and took a gazillion amazing photos of tulips, including these two macro shots…

Orchids, orchids, orchids…

 

The sexiest of all the flowers, leaving roses pale and gasping in their wake. Pulsing, daring, expecting, lurid, lascivious and luscious.

How could they ever have aligned themselves with witless school boys and prom night?

 

Budding Protea

Queen Protea bud. Named for the Greek god, Proteus who was able to shift shape.

OK, here is the open flower… Amazing stuff!

Lily pad love

Made a jaunt up to the Auckland Domain today and visited the Wintergarden. This is in the atrium area of the hothouse. Picture perfect.

Remembering Spring

Tomorrow, 5th of May, Cinco de Mayo, is my birthday. While I have lived in the southern hemisphere for 18 years now, I have never got used to having my birthday in the Autumn. Whilst we did have a sprinkling of snow on the ground a few times when we lived in the mountains of upstate New York, generally speaking, my birthday was accompanied by tulips and daffodils, blossoming fruit trees and the return of Red Robin. It’s one of the few things I really, truly miss.

On the other hand, I have a rather ferocious allergy to flowers. I’m less likely to be overcome by an allergy attack here!

Johnny Jump Up

One of the sure signs that spring is here, despite the cold that just won’t quit is the annual Parnell Rose Festival, arts, crafts, and roses, roses, roses. Yes, I took some very nice photos of some of the roses, though I was with a friend who is not used to being with a photographer, so I had to restrain myself – no laying on the ground shooting flowers from below…

So I get home and look at some of my shots and this one, a long exposure under a tree, so I had time to play with the zoom on the lens, won the day for me. A bunch of Johnny Jump Ups growing under a big shady tree, so common, so ordinary, really just genteel weeds. They were one of my mother’s favourites and she was a grand gardener, but had a soft spot for these little guys, and now so do I.