Cherries

My favorite fruit... and the blooms are always so amazing to me. I have a nice collection of cherries in my bedroom - an incredible print I bought in Banner Elk last summer, a cherry wood vase and an unbelievable photos of a cherry tree that a friend gave me last June.

I love to eat cherries, and they will make me spend crazy amounts of money to devour a bag... My Taylor grandparents had a cherry tree beside their house that I spent many a summer Sunday afternoon in, high up among the branches. The beauty of that approach was that you could pick, eat, discharge the seed and repeat without worries. It was one of my favorite memories of that house. I visited the Taylor house this past summer and the tree was left with just a trunk, and only my imagination to remember a tree that seemed hundreds of feet high as a child.

During the summer of 1995, I visited Seattle for a conference. Doing the usual tourist thing, my then wife and I visited Pike Place market and discovered these odd colored cherries -- a muddled red and yellow variety that I discovered were named Rainier. I was offered a sample, and nearly fell over in love. The taste was so different, and as I discovered, so rare that getting them has been a crazy exercise over the years since. One year I spent nearly $100 to get some shipped to me overnight from Washington state.

Four years ago, I was in Washington for the cherry blossom festival, which honestly was nearly overwhelming -- so many trees that it became a blur.

So today, when I saw these blooms, joined throughout by emerging and growing leaves, I was thankful for such a wondrous image to inspire me today.

D90 300mm f/11 1/80 ISO 200