project 52: the "eyes" of march

In November 2009, in the pitch dark of a Winter afternoon, my toddler and I prepared some pots in anticipation of Spring. Tiny white tulip bulbs, white daffodils and three hellebore plants. Dressed in her fleecy jumpsuit, mittens and hat, my two-year-old patted down the soil over the bulbs and coined a phrase that I will now use for ever when planting bulbs, saying that she was "tucking the flowers in to bed for the Winter". By the time Spring arrived, we were on our way to the other side of the world at the start of our tropical adventures, so we never did get to see the pot waking up.

Three Springs later, The Boss is a leggy wisecracker who has completely forgotten that lovely cold, dark afternoon, in fact she's forgotten that afternoons can be cold and dark. But on arriving home from the airport she immediately decided to go and pick me some flowers. Turns out that those hellebores (or aptly-known "Lenten roses") are the first and only flowers in the garden at the moment, so that's what she brought me. If you've ever seen them, you'll know that hellebores have beguiling eyes that you can spend ages peering into. Hence they're my subject for p52, the "eyes" of March.

ISO200, f/10, 1/25s, macro filter on 50mm lens, cloudy WB
auto curves applied in photoshop
a bit fuzzy - that might have been me shivering...