It was a bad day yesterday, hence my latest lapse in my photo diary – I won’t go into all of the gory details but suffice to say I encountered one of the rudest people I’ve met in a long time and she was the catalyst of a number of events that turned my day into a really grotty one.

So, this morning, I was determined that today would be better.

I rushed past the bush that DM blurred yesterday, which happens to be outside our front door and was again (for the very many-th time) captivated by its colour. So, I decided to capture it in my own way – close-up and colourful.

It’s a stunning blue hydrangea that’s leaves are really lovely at the moment….well, in fact the whole thing is gorgeous – fading blue, skeletal flowers on top of stems with these fab leaves on. I really must get around to trying to take some cuttings from it so I can put more of them around the garden but every year goes by and I don’t get around to it.

My plant biology has again been fascinating – I’ve even identified something that will help me in the garden - how to spot calcium deficiency in plants and what that means to the plant. I recognised it straight away and now know that I can cure several problems in my garden with an application of calcified seaweed. So there it is – science in action. I also saw a number of other things from my veggie patch in an entirely new light.

Isn’t this leaf exquisite – even setting aside the colour – you can almost believe you can see inside the cells themselves when you see the veins and the leaf structure. I have done that – I have looked at the cells inside a leaf and know what makes them tick in all sorts of ways I never before imagined. I’ve seen how it makes oxygen from carbon dioxide. I’ve seen how it captures the carbon dioxide – all sorts of amazing things that are all there for a purpose and all goes about its stuff because of little bits of DNA that tell each cell what to do and how to behave. Isn’t nature great?

It's a lot better than seeing the other type of red.