This is my post for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day.

Yes, I am aware I am four days late for the party. However on the morning of the 15th, I reached out for my trusty camera and discovered that while lurking at the bottom of my bag it had had a close encounter with a leaky water bottle, with disastrous consequences for all concerned.

After many howls of anguish and much prodding of unresponding buttons, I bowed to the inevitable and bought a new camera.

In the process I discovered that my old camera, which was the first thing I bought when I jacked in the day job to become a garden writer five years ago, had reduced in value from £350 to just £59.99.

How are the mighty fallen. Actually being bloody-minded and terminally uninterested in technology, I figured if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it (well, the camera was, but bear with me here) and so I wasn’t going to change a make of camera I was perfectly happy with just because there was something newer and more modern on the market (note I didn’t say necessarily ‘better’; I don’t have any particular need for the capacity to hot-wire pictures to my Facebook account on the move, even if I had one, which I don’t).

So I have congratulated myself on my frugality and bought a camera that’s exactly the same, but for around a fifth of the price of what they tell me is the equivalent these days.

(and the more up-to-date version didn’t even have a viewfinder. I use my viewfinder all the time on sunny days. Why wouldn’t they include a viewfinder?)

Anyway. Inconsequental rant over. The camera in question is an Olympus SP500-UZ by the way: discontinued these days therefore ridiculously good value.

So the reason for carrying on with GBBD regardless is that my garden is currently brimming over with flowers and I just couldn’t let the chance go by to get out there and take pictures of them in all this gorgeous sunshine. Enjoy!

Thanks as always (if a little late this month) to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day.