The car broke down, and on a trip filled with minor disasters, it was the best thing that could have happened during the holiday.  I left it at a garage in Aberdeen city centre and I had three hours to kill before it would be ready to collect.  Walking towards nowhere in particular, camera in hand, I found this beautiful cavalcade of roses.  I was compelled to test out my new camera in what turned out to be the beginning of an afternoon of photography.  The results are below.

Whilst perusing them for choosing which pictures to share with you all and which ones to discard, the following little ditty came into my thoughts, and it is somewhat appropriate (plus it’s ALWAYS Music O’Clock in my house; to say I like music is an understatement).

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Do you know where I found these?  Outside an unremarkable retirement complex with no interesting architecture or other heritage, in a city filled with ancient buildings.  I guess it reminded me that beauty is everywhere, we just have to pay attention to it.  When I put a magnifying glass to this patch of roses with my camera, it has become bigger in my memory than it was in real life, but if I saw these every day, I probably would never have noticed their beauty.

This was really the turning point in the trip to Scotland in August (it was two hours after that head injury), and everything started to pick up from the moment I decided to take photos of these flowers instead of passing them by in the search for something “interesting” to do.  The next part of the afternoon’s photographic extravaganza can be found here, which begins around the corner from the roses pictured above.

I guess it really is true that everything in life can be pinned down to a series of tiny decisions.