Pink and flowery

I have never been a particularly pink girly, as you may imagine. However, there are some flowers which I think are best in pink (- and some I don't: Japanese anemones, which we only have in pink, are better in white, I believe.  Pink forget-me-nots are verging on an abomination...).

Camellias, or camelias as we like to call them, favouring the orthography and pronunciation of Dumas, I like best in light pink, preferably shaded.  The red make me think rather of Edam cheese rind or tired Christmas candles and look tawdry when they fade and brown.  We only acquired our first camelia this year, it's called Nuccio's Pearl.

It was small but had a couple of flower buds when it came from the nursery, though these have faded and dropped quickly in this strange April drought and heat wave we've been having (I've enjoyed the suhshine and warmth, but now have a sense that enough is enough...).  Last week we went to La Roche-Jagu ( that link is to Brittany Tourism's English translation, partly because it has some quite amusing language in it, such as a haughty castle... the one main wing left standing has severe good looks...) which is famed for its camelias and rhododendrons.  Needless to say we were rather between the two, but some of the former were still in good shape.  I tried not to get too caught up with photographing them, or there's have been no end to it...

There was one very pink rhodo out too, which invited a pic, especially as it had a bee on it.

The other pink flowers which delight me are blossom trees.  Blossom trees are just one of those horticultural miracles of impossible generosity, I think.  In some ways it seems absurd that we grovel about trying to coax a few flowers out at ground level, when you can have a whole treeful of the things to all the depth and breadth and height which that affords, for really no effort at all - except for waiting for them to grow, of course.  We have four blossom trees in a row, two prunus and two malus, and they even have all different colour leaves as well, and fruit in the case of the malus, far more than I can ever use for crab apple jelly.

 They go from white with a touch of pink,

to almost red,

and I love them all, but the most photogenic for me this year was the pink prunus with the sprays of flowers.

(Don't ask me what the variety is, I can't remember)

Anyway, no apologies ( which is actually a way of apologising isn't it?  I'm sure there's a term for that...) for the effete and sugary nature of this post.  Not everything in the garden is rosy of course, but some things are.