Tulip

The weather being horrible, and these tulips being almost over, I froze a new one - but I didn't start it early enough and by dinner time it still wasn't ready to be photographed, so I had to do something else. This was shot on the light pad, with a single LED light plus a pop of flash. There are some faint shadows (which I could have cloned out if I'd felt inclined), but on the whole I think it worked pretty well.

By far the nicest thing that happened today was the postman turning up this morning with a box of spring flowers: a Mother's Day gift from the Offspring. I have a rather ambivalent relationship with Mother's Day, partly because I don't think my mothering efforts were much to write home about, and partly because it's a day in which young people do nice things for old ones, and I haven't yet come to terms with being on the wrong side of that equation - but it's still delightful to be sent a gift, especially as if I'd thought about it at all before today, I would have assumed that they were too busy to have arranged anything.

Child One is currently in Austria as the guest of the Vienna Independent Film Festival, where she has, I think, two short films showing. It's at times like this, while shaking my head in wonderment, that I remember her first school headmistress saying to me that she thought the Child (who at the age of seven rarely made it through a day without being thrown out of the classroom for non-compliance), would one day be Prime Minister; either that, or she'd wind up in prison.... or possibly both. Child Two is almost certainly running hither and yon, because that's the life of a young musician, and sadly he's based too far away for me to subject him to regular feeding and interrogation; but from time to time pieces of his portfolio turn up on line, and this week I was charmed to see this video of the lovely George Boomsma singing a song for which the Child wrote the string arrangement. I hope you like it as much as I do.