Beargrass

From Mount Rainier National Park:

Happy (almost) Valentine's Day! For today's Flickr Friday, here's a bouquet of blooms on one of Mount Rainier's most showy wildflowers, beargrass. These flowers run in cycles, with some years better than others, and 2014 was one of the best years in memory here on the Mountain. Instead of going for the typical photo of white blooms spreading across the hillside like snow, however, this photographer got in close, using a macro lens to capture the warm glow of light diffusing through an individual cluster, with its neighbors softly blurred in the background. The effect is almost abstract, and conveys the feeling of a time and place. May your Valentine's Day be as lovely as this! ~klb

Photo: Beargrass blooms on the Shadow Lake Trail at Sunrise, by Mary Bailey, July 18, 2014,flickr.com/groups/MountRainierNPS, used with attribution under a Creative Commons license.