On windy days and disappointment

Apple blossom. Photo: Su Leslie, 2014. Shot with iPhone4, edited with Snapseed and Aviary Photo Editor.

It is proving to be a miserable Spring here. Too cold to work in the garden for long and so windy that the blossoms which so recently promised so much, are struggling to remain on the trees. The lawn is spread with prematurely browning Kowhai flowers and I fear for the Tui who should be feasting on them. And although it’s getting dark later in the evenings, I’m not at all tempted to go out into the blustery twilight we are experiencing night after night.

So much for the season of rebirth and renewal.

My melancholy; my general grumpiness and sense of being somehow cheated, actually surprises me. Once upon a time — when I had a career and ambitions of corporate greatness — my life was lived so entirely in the artificial world of offices, bars and cafes that I hardly noticed the passing of the seasons. Now — when I can no longer answer the question “what do you do” according to the employment-related expectations of those who ask such a question — I am constantly and acutely aware of the natural world.

Of all the photos I have taken recently, this one captures the discontinuity and perplexity in my world right now. The flowers look staged, as though the branch has been chopped from the tree and taken indoors. It looks like an imitation of nature, re-created in the studio, and rendered in black and white for artistic emphasis.

But the shot was taken in a local park; real flowers on a real tree.

It’s just that, like our Spring, it really doesn’t seem that way.

This week the theme of Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge is black and white.