Soft Focus

Somehow, we have managed to keep a poinsettia alive since Christmas. Not only alive, but flourishing. It sits on the kitchen windowsill and doesn't get a great deal of attention - until I noticed the evening sun shining through the leaves and decided it may make a good picture.

It was quite tricky focusing on it, as it just didn't look sharp. The problem was that the veins are on the reverse of the leaf, so they look soft and the light shining through it makes the surface look out of focus, but if you look closely, the edges towards the bottom are quite sharp.

The day was quite interesting. I did a bit of chasing round after my daughter, as she had forgotten her purse when she went to work and couldn't get the bus - but she didn't tell me where she was, and she wasn't where I had dropped her off in the morning. I eventually found her after ringing her from the mother-in-law's house and we got back home.

I decided to chance the heavy showers and go for a bike ride, but I'd only gone just over a mile when the front tyre got a puncture, so I pushed the bike back to the village. I'd just reached the outskirts when one of the showers which I'd taken a chance on hit me, so I trudged the last quarter of a mile in the rain and now have to fix the puncture tomorrow.

It could have been a lot worse. I could have been a lot further from home when the puncture struck. As it was, the walk back was quite pleasant - and even the rain wasn't too bad, really.