Queen of them all

I know. It's getting boring - all these shots from my garden. But this large, bountiful azalea is just coming into full, magnificent bloom, and if the weather changes it'll all scatter so I thought I'd better immortalise it ...

We're usually abroad for part of May. I'm regretting the inertia that held me back from booking a foreign trip this month in case Brexit fouled up travel plans or connections, but it means I'm enjoying what often seemed to pass while we were out of the country - flowers, scents, that last peaking of Spring that in a way makes me think of a boy's singing voice at the peak of his powers as a treble before the change dashes him into his boots and his chorister days are over. I was recalling the May we were in the Dordogne on a walking holiday and news started appearing on my phone of gales lashing the Argyll coastline and disrupting the ferries. When we got home, there was absolutely no sign of any blossom at all in our garden, and the leaves on trees all down the coast road were either gone or wizened and brow. 

A nondescript day apart from these flowers, enlivened only by the painful effects of the squishy ball we use in Pilates somehow landing under my bottom ribs and doing something very painful to them. It's the painkillers for me tonight - though not, apparently, Ibuprofen, at least until tomorrow. My latest acquired wisdom is that anti-inflammatories taken too early can slow healing...

Who knew?