Mother's Day Flowers

It's Mother's Day today and I'm the lucky recipient of a beautiful bunch of flowers from daughter #1, cards from daughters #4 & 5 and a telephone call from son #1.
I'm a very happy lady!

There's a black joke in our family that my will is revised annually on my birthday and on Mother's day. Given that there is so little expectation of any windfall, this cannot possibly be classed as blackmail.
My head knows full well that all the hype today is fuelled by greedy commercialisation, but my heart appreciates any little act of rememberance from my offspring.

Once children have left the nest, got married, moved to other parts and had their own children, then one is placed at the foot of the pecking order, and so it is doubly appreciated if they just might remember me on these two days a year. And they have.... well most of them anyway!

I spent a very long time trying to blip these flowers using my new 50mm lens. All the time I was itching to use the macro setting on my TZ5, but resisted, so I'm not sure if I would have achieved a better result with it or not. I think there might be one tulip in focus in this blip.

Hopefully practice will eventually make perfect.