My Photo-Mania

Last night cooled down very nicely. The bowl of the dark night sky was velvety black-blue, and there were bright stars overhead, just waiting to be identified and admired. With patience, one could witness satellites slowly rounding the Earth. With patience, the occasional shooting star could be seen.

Lacking patience, I determined to shoot photographs instead. Finding it an absolute thrill to take photographs of our gardens at night. Who might ever have imagined such a possibility before the advent of fail-proof digital photography?

White flowers glow at night in the garden, and we've ample white in the huge globular hydrangea blossoms. Oddly enough, the bright yellow marigold flower heads appear pink at night. And the pink-reds of the wax and fibrous begonias and the phlox appear to glow in the night light cast by the light standard sitting beside the deck.

Oddly enough the grouping of the Three Graces and that of Discobolus appear chalk-white in the contrast between the light and the dark, and the flash of the camera. I experience excited anticipation, taking those photographs, anxious and eager to see the results, to feast on the vision of the garden at night.

In my nightgown and dressing gown, I prowl about the gardens, front and back of the house, snapping photographs, delighted at the prospect of the resulting photos.

There's a magic-like, fairytale quality about the gardens, quite unlike the manner in which they appear during the day, when everything seems sturdier, more real, although no less alive than they appear at night.

It's the mysterious night-time apparition of colour and form and texture that is so appealing. After all, at night we should not be able to to do this; prowl about and admire anything at all, so hidden in the deep of night.

But here are our gardens, proudly alive and fragrantly blooming, hiding nothing whatever from our gaze, and the probing directness of the camera, intent on capturing the essence of the night-enhanced glory of floral displays in all manifestations of plume and bloom.

I feel like a night-sprite drifting among the plants and the urns, the walkways and the trees and shrubs, all offering their beauty despite the absence of sun and light.

My camera's eye pays homage to the structure, grace and beauty of the garden, and I exult.