The thing about dandelions is they appear to be everywhere at this time of year. They are perennial plants and each year, there appears to be more and more of them.
They are more often than not considered to be weeds. In some Northern Italian dialects they are known as pisacan (translation, dog pisses) because they are found at the side of pavements.
Yet they are known to have nutritional health benefits (the entire plant is edible apparently) and in homeopathic circles, they have medicinal benefits too. I’m not promoting homeopathy here by the way, or attempting to discredit it, I’m just making a point. How you view them, like everything in life, is entirely subjective to you.
I personally find them to be quite beautiful and photgenic flowers. Not just as an addition of bright colour wherever they spring up, but also providing an apparent endless opportunity in which to view them, either in bloom or in seed.
At this moment in time my mood is low. I have an ear infection and I’m on antibiotics. Consequently, many things are giving me disproportionate levels of annoyance. I have come to understand that for me, this is a sign that something is not right mentally and physically. And I have to work hard to overcome it.
In the past I would have drunk more; got angry at football or politics or something that I have very little (if any) control over. And it’s a battle to avoid returning there in such times. My sober way of coping and accepting things I can’t control is to go for a walk, take some photos, return home then put on some music and edit them.
However I am now house bound for seven days due to my illness. That’s the advice from my doctor by the way not from hypocritical self-serving political figures. It reduces the risk of spreading my infection to others; I do not believe it to be an infringement of my civil liberty. So I have had to forego the walk today and work on some photos I took the last time I ventured out.
Here are some edits of a dandelion that I captured on the macro lens. I spotted the flower happily growing next to the Macclesfield Canal in Sutton…
Today’s musical inspiration is Jazz is Dead 001 by Adrian Young & Ali Shaheed Muhammad. And purely by happy coincidence, when the album finished on Spotify it segued into the incredible, and very Expansions by Lonnie Liston Smith.
Ronnie xx
