Things blooming

From mid-February, things have been blooming, starting with the weeping plum. A friend criticised me persistently for having cut back my plum so harshly. I didn't have the heart to riposte with the timeless Japanese wisdom "He who prunes a cherry; complete idiot. He who fails to a prune plum; stupid bastard". (The English seems to depend a lot on the translation, but the original Japanese expression is quite unequivocal.)

Weeping plum

Apricot (close-up)

Apricot (distant)

Almond.
People keep walking past and commenting that my cherry is looking pretty.

The thing that produces the not very palatable berries around June.

Actual cherry blossoms.
We can see these blooming from our kitchen window. I went to have a look at them close-up, and strangely enough, I could also see our kitchen window in the distance.

Today I went to the temple Zenno-ji just up the road where a lot of big old cherry trees blossom. In the quiet of the temple grounds, the hum of the bees harvesting the pollen sounded like ... like ... well, something a bit Zen-like I suppose.


Here, clever people will suppose that they've detected a category error. However, this newly emerged butterfly looked so much like a flower when it first caught my eye that I don't mind taking the liberty of posting it as a blooming thing.