The Dogwood Tree

"It needs a bit of shaping". said the Treecutter, last December. I didn't realize he meant shaping it out of close-up range.

I've always shot my Dogwood flowers at night, close up (with a torch held taut in my underarm). But he's taken all the lower limbs out, all the ones I could reach, all the limbs I used to pull down on to get a glorious snap of the plate size flowers.

I've had to stand all the way back at the garden gate, extend my tripod to its outer limits (at which point, its shortcomings became apparent) and try to focus the top of the tree. It's got to be 10,000 feet tall! (it should really have aircraft warning lights).

It'll look like a gigantic white mushroom in a few days. And then all the flowers will start to drop off. I'll have to pick them out of the beds below, rake them up off the lawn ... and Fred will show up at some point ... not to help, just to plunk a fallen flower on the top of his head and say, "Mum! I've got my sun hat on!".