Spring's only gone and bloody sprung

Just working on my FIFTY FACES images of Anna and Christian, hopefully to appear tomorrow, when I found these three which I shot while waiting to meet the models. I know, I know, pictures of flowers to represent spring, all a bit cheesy, blah blah blah (also hastily edited and posted!) But how can something this pretty fail to uplift you a little bit?

I'll leave you with this poem from Robert Browning, in memory of my grandmother, who loved an English spring.

Home Thoughts from Abroad

I OH, to be in England now that April ’s there And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough          In England—now! II And after April, when Mary follows And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover          Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge— That ’s the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could re-capture The first fine careless rapture! And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,          All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children’s dower, Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!