Daphne

It's dripping wet today so I just nipped out quickly to take this photo of daphne laureola, spurge laurel, which is growing beneath a beech tree in the front garden. The tree, probably self-seeded originally, is in quite the wrong place - the front garden is tiny. The photo was hastily taken - I didn't have the inclination to be dripped on more than necessary - and the camera had a job finding focus, but I love the clusters of tiny flowers that appear at this time on what is an otherwise not very remarkable plant, at least to look at, and the wet seems to enhance the texture of the flower tubes.

My parents' garden had a number of specimens of this, so they're a plant that I've been intrigued by all my life. As a child I think I just thought them rather boring, but I'm very fond of them now, which no doubt has much to do with the freight of emotional associations I've given them to carry.