A Date With Blossom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve fallen in love again. It happens once a year normally between the months of mid March to mid April but the dates do move. This year I have been fortunate to witness the once a year weekly, sometimes stretching as far as two weeks bloom of the magnificent Cherry Blossom trees This year the bloom has fallen in my birthday month of May.

This year the bloom is late causing concern perhaps more for the environmentally conscious about the state of our weather. Yet at the same time giving our eyes a treat after the sluggish weather conditions of the last few months. In the ancient cultures of Japan the blossoming of the Cherry Blossoms were used to forecast how crops for the coming year would do. So make of that what you will. I wonder how this later bloom will impact on the state of the crops and harvest for this year?

I woke up this morning determined to capture some shots of the Cherry Blossoms before their delightful blooms disappear from our landscape over the next few days for another year. So I set myself a creative expedition of going on a short savour safari. The idea of a savour safari is to really drink in your chosen object through as many of the senses as possible. Savouring is different to a glance. A glance bounces on and off in a jiffy. It’s a slowing down in the absence of rushing. It’s about taking time to be with the moment, your object, food or a person rather than rushing your way past or through. I believe that savour is a word we need to reclaim in our busy, hectic lives. We do not savour enough in our modern world and I am determined to readdress this balance, starting with myself.

The word savour comes from the old French word savour and from the Latin word sapor. It means, “The quality in a substance that is perceived by the sense of taste and smell.”

So what I did this morning before I started out on the emails was to hop into my car and take a short tour of my local area snapping images of as many Cherry Blossom trees that have birthed their clusters of pink fuchsia, white almond and rust oranges clusters of flower petals in my local neighbourhood.

My morning trip was a delight. Cherry Blossoms were bursting out everywhere. There was no holding back from these trees, which for the other eleven months of the year could be so easily looked over. I found them on street corners, bursting out from behind fences in back and front gardens, on roundabouts and pedestrian crossings.

Of course I cannot taste the Cherry Blossoms trees around me and the smell of the Cherry Blossom’s fragrance seems to have been dispersed in our toxic air. So today my savouring is fuelled by sight and the feelings, sensations and memories that are evoked when I am around these trees. After my photo expedition I made time to journal and I’m surprised by what surfaces on the page, memories and desires of being married in an orchard of Cherry blossom trees. An Internet search shortly afterwards reveals that the most globally requested destination to be married is under a Cherry Blossom tree.

Enjoy my personal gallery of the Cherry Blossoms captured on my iphone this morning and one of a Cherry Blossom I snapped on a trip to Colchester this week for work. These images will keep me going for another year until the Bloom of the Cherry Blossom returns next spring.

I’d love to see some of your images of the Cherry Blossom tree in your areas or from your travels. Just email copies to: jackeeholder@aol.com and I will post your images on the blog. Let us know the site of your Cherry Blossom and date of your Blossom Patrol.