Tender Is The Flower, The Friars, Aylesford

Today we started with a slightly longer run down to the village and back. We had a bit of an ulterior motive as we wanted to check how much the roadworks we were informed about by Southern Water are going to affect journeys for the scheduled five week repair time. It turns out the village is going to be cut off completely from one direction during this whole period. At the same time UK Power Networks are also carrying out works at another location nearby which will also badly affect access to the village along Station Road. Of course, this will create traffic chaos and the suggested detour involves vehicles being sent up an already notoriously congested route into Maidstone. So perfectly badly organised that you just have to laugh at the stupidity of it all, especially as both sets of roadworks are due to last until the kids go back to school.
After our exertions we had breakfast and a relaxing morning before heading back to the village for a drink at out local, The Chequers. I spoke to the landlord and he was incensed about the roadworks - he said he was already over a thousand pounds down after two days and was seeking compensation for the effect it was going to have on his trade. It really does beg the question as to why we are so bad at this kind of thing. Mitigating help could have been put in place but there is none, even the diversion signs are so poor and confusing that they might as well not have bothered.
For photography purposes we walked up to The Friars and that's where I took today's images. I wanted to try something different so used shallow depth of field and spot metering to try and capture two takes on the tenderness and beautiful simplicity of flowers.