Of course, I was somewhat exaggerating with my previous post, Just Like That, Kyoto's Cherry-Blossom Season Ends, because cherry-blossom season doesn't end the day after full bloom any more than blowing out the first candle on a cake ends a birthday party. The weather – very strong haze and occasional rain – isn't nearly as nice as the weekend was, but there's still plenty of Cherry-Blossom Joie de Vivre left in Kyoto.

I realized this morning that I'd neglected to revisit the trees on the grounds of the Old Imperial Palace that were featured in a post three weeks ago completely bare and forlorn looking, so I decided to take a bicycle ride with Anthony over to check it out today.

The main tree in the first photo of the three-week-ago post was essentially devoid of blossoms, they having budded, bloomed, and fallen in the intervening three weeks...

The second tree (the “raintree-like” one) was the same, but in that immediate vicinity they stood alone as a different variety from the dozens of other cherry trees that were utterly spectacular.

Right next to the now-bare first one, for example....

The shade of pink was just wonderful, and the atmosphere laid back and thoroughly enjoyable. The haze actually made photography easier, although I could have done with a bit more overall brightness.

I noticed these gentlemen just as they were clinking their paper cups in “cheers”, but was too slow to capture it. That would have been an excellent shot.

There were plenty of places like this to enjoy the blossoms with a few friends, and feel you had the whole earth to yourself (although I admit to having cloned this image to deemphasize a few heads visible on the other side of the hedge, but for the record, none of the other images on this post have had any cloning).

Given a bit of maneuvering and patience, it wasn't too hard to get nice scenes without too much human presence (like “Typical Scene #1” above), but in looking over the 197 photos I took, I found that at least for the wide-angle views, I preferred those that include people. It was a nice atmosphere, so I guess I like the photos that reflect that.

Blossom petals were falling continuously, but occasionally a gust of wind would whip up a mini blizzard of them. It's quite impossible to capture, but this next shot gives a hint of the tail end of one such squall...

At five years old, Anthony couldn't care less about all this “blossom” stuff. He much preferred showing Nanasa-chan, a classmate from kindergarten whom we happened to run into, the kickstand that was added to his bike earlier this afternoon.

Hmmm, I wonder whether any of the shots today would make for a good desktop background, to add to the collection I've posted....

Continued here...