The witch hazel plant just off our back deck is a bit wacky, if you ask me.
Every year, right around Christmas, the crazy thing blooms, apparently oblivious to the seasonal fact of life that it is Winter.
I shot the above image this morning with a macro lens, getting up close to witchy woman's sensuous, golden curls. Though the weather today does happen to be sunny with temperatures nudging 50 degrees, the witch, Hazel, blooms at this time, even in years when there is snow and ice around.
As I put this morning's photographs on a backup drive, I noticed that it was just 10 days ago that I shot the images I'm now posting below. It doesn't snow often at our house -- most of the snow we get in Western Washington falls in our mountains, not in the lowlands -- so when white stuff does cover our local landscape, I venture out with a camera, looking here and there, hoping to find an image or two to document the Big Event.
Forgive me if I sound a bit paranoid, but I think Hazel the Witch and her girlfriend, Mother Nature, might secretly be working together: Two dames in cahoots…intent, as women often are, in keeping a photographer fella like me off-balance.
