Cherry-Ripe

Lots of favourite things here: red, red and white together, stripes, hats … and cherries. Who doesn’t love a cherry motif? There would be just something wrong with you if you could reject a cherry. Retro, yet never out of fashion. There are a zillion cherry earrings on Etsy, and I wonder how many lipsticks have been named after cherries? And let’s not forget black forest cake.

I found this cute little cherry printed tank in a charity shop. You can’t really see it in the photos, but the dark shading on the cherry print has been done in an enlarged halftone (that is the dot pattern you see on all printed material). That little detail is just the cherry on top.

I remembered a quaint old poem I read somewhere once upon a time about a girl so deliciously sweet Thomas Campion compared her to a bunch of cherries. Here it is:

Cherry-Ripe

There is a garden in her face 
  Where roses and white lilies blow; 
A heavenly paradise is that place, 
  Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow: 
  There cherries grow which none may buy 
  Till ‘Cherry-ripe’ themselves do cry. 

Those cherries fairly do enclose 
  Of orient pearl a double row, 
Which when her lovely laughter shows, 
  They look like rose-buds fill’d with snow; 
  Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy 
  Till ‘Cherry-ripe’ themselves do cry. 

Her eyes like angels watch them still; 
  Her brows like bended bows do stand, 
Threat’ning with piercing frowns to kill 
  All that attempt with eye or hand 
  Those sacred cherries to come nigh, 
  Till ‘Cherry-ripe’ themselves do cry.

There are a couple of extra images on the SNAP Facebook page – it was hard to decide which background I liked best.