I should say right at the outset -- I am a cliche, a walking, picture-taking cliche: I love flowers.   I love meandering through botanical gardens, aiming the camera at whatever burst of color catches my eye.  I like snooping through friends' backyards, watching out for pretty weeds. I am the sort of person who, when visiting a wonderful old mansion, keeps one eye out the window, trying to figure out what's the best angle to photograph that flowering crabapple by the pond. I am an utterly hopeless case: a flower fiend and proud of it.

This is one of my earliest flower photos.  I was walking down Edinburgh's High Street when I saw these fist-sized pom-poms at a flowerseller's stall.  It was my first encounter with the giant thistle -- at least that's what the sign said they were. To follow up one confession with another, I am also utterly hopeless at keeping track of names; genus, species, that sort of thing.  To me, it's all about color and shape.