At some point I had looked up what kind of butterfly this is, but I’ve long since forgotten. These flowers, though, attract them, and there’s a whole garden area on the Blarney Castle grounds where they cultivate the flowers to draw the insects. It was wonderful fun in there with my friend Susannah, creeping after butterflies and inhaling the scent of the blooms.
This is almost the first thing you see upon leaving the train station in Cork. Usually it’s not quite that foreboding. :)
I feel terribly damned clever for snapping this shot just as the duck was, er, ducking, into the water, even though it’s pure luck and happenstance that I clicked the shutter at that very moment. :)
All right, technically the lily pads themselves are rather back there in the distance, but I haven’t a clue what the lovely little yellow water-growing flowers are, so lily pads it is. I bet I have a whole series’ worth of near-focus flower images like this, now that I think about it…