reliably unreliable forsythia and her bait-and-switch cousins

There are certain flowering trees and shrubs that foil me every spring. From a distance they are gorgeous. They beg to be photographed. Every year, I snip a branch, or two branches, or a bouquet of branches, and arrange them in front of my camera. And every year, they are a bust up close. Redbud, red maple, lilacs, apple blossoms, forsythia. In each case, the profusion is where the delight lies. The individual flowers are unremarkable or unphotogenic, or they are spaced so far apart on individual branches that they look downright spare. And so I take my one photo every year, and toss the branches back in the woods. Hey, forsythia. Thanks for nothing.

forsythia