The picture (above) is a macro shot of our salmon-pink poppy in the front flower bed, taken just after it opened. The parts are still fresh and wholly alive and very, very sensual. I look closely at a structure like this and think that an alien could not be any stranger. And here is something so other-worldly at our very feet!
Look now (above) at the same structure in our traditional orange poppies. It is the same and yet it has a wildly different feel about it. Who can pass a poppy and not look deeply into this soul of this flower?
While I was photographing the poppies, our family of eastern bluebirds were flitting about the yard as though on training flights. When Bob and I worked on shingling the garage roof, I'd often look down upon the bluebird box at the edge of the garden and one would be sitting there watching us, completely unafraid. I thought that it was simply that by being higher than the birds, I had presented something less fearful.
But when I was admiring the poppies, a pair landed on the burn barrel and I quickly switched from macro to telephoto and took a shot of the birds. What a gorgeous sky blue above, gentle orange below, as though the sun was setting on their very feathers. They are the evening sky itself on wing.
I hope there is a resurgeance of bluebirds and I trust we are taking a part in this.
