At First Blush

When we first bought our house a number of years ago, we had a lot of fun designing and planting the landscaping. One of the things we tried to do was use trees and annuals that would bloom at different times of the year so that something new would always be coming up during the growing season.  I think one of our favorites is our weeping cherry tree. It has bloomed faithfully each year, just about a week or so after the high point of the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC … and it’s always a hold-your-breath kind of time to see if our tree made it through the winter. Winters here can be pretty unpredictable. Oddly, after an unusually rough, long and cold one this past year, our cherry tree seemed to outdo herself in blossoms and color.

One thing that’s interesting to me is that the sight of the tree itself is so breathtaking, it’s easy to enjoy it as a whole being. But taking the time to really get inside, among the branches and the blossoms, is a completely different way of appreciating it.

This image was taken with the Nikon D750 and the Nikkor 105mm macro /micro lens April, 17, 2015. Some edits in Photoshop CS6 then a trip to Corel Painter 2015 for a thorough digital hand-painting and lots of play for an impressionistic, joyful, blowsy springtime feel.

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As always, a click on the image brings you to my website where you can view it at a better resolution, a much better watermark, and lots of purchase options.  And also as always, watermarks will never appear on purchased items.