The day is almost over but wait … there’s still time to post a macro!
Featured: a Long-tailed Skipper (Urbanus proteus) on a Butterfly Bush (Buddleja dividii).
Funny story: I bought the Butterfly Bush a few years ago and kept it in a pot on our deck for a long while. Although its blooms were profuse, I never saw any butterflies on it. Then we decided to plant it in our garden area (it was getting way too big for a pot). A year goes by. It blooms. Still no butterflies.
Until yesterday.
This skipper was so focused on feeding that I was able to take several photos.
Hello, everyone! Spring has arrived here in north Florida, a real feast for the eyes this year. We credit a few long, soaking rains for the abundance of color.
Magenta blooms from an azalea bush.
Close-up of a variegated pink azalea bloom.
Fat carpenter bee sucking nectar from a dark pink azalea flower.
White azalea flowers.
All together: magenta, pink, red, and white azalea flowers along our front yard.
Elsewhere in our gardens …
Bulbine with small yellow flowers and a bunch of buds.
Woodland pholx: a bushy plant with purple violet-like flowers.
Blue-eyed grass (grass with delicate blue flowers).
Pink sorrel, a type of groundcover with pink, violet-like flowers. Grows wild.
Columbine, a delicate plant with red flowers that hang like upside down tulips with yellow fronds.
Close-up of a native pink azalea, petals not yet fully open.
A bromeliad plant with several red and yellow buds poking upward.
A red buckeye bush (or tree, I hope) with small red flowers on top.
While color is bursting out all over in my little corner of the world, I’ve been busying myself with writing (more or less) and various handcrafts. I’ve knitted two pair of socks. One pair (not shown) is mostly purple. The pair below was not intended to be “mismatched.” I apparently drew from the wrong end of the yarn for one, but I really like how these turned out. I might do this kind of mistake on purpose next time.
A pair of feet clad in striped socks, colors ranging from yellow to green to red to purple.
I also sewed the bag in this photo, finally finding something to do with the fabric remnant I bought years ago. It’s called a 4-corner bag (designed by Cocoknits) and was super easy to make. I have a fetish for bags and am enjoying this one so much I might make more.
A bag made of light denim fabric with a muted flower pattern and leather straps.
Finally, we’ve done a grownup thing and bought new living room furniture. The cushions and springs of our old furniture were fairly shot after 15 years of wear and the upholstery fairly destroyed after 15 years of tear by our cats. Note: Do not buy tapestry-like upholstered furniture if you have cats.
View of a brown leather loveseat and a brown leather sofa in our living room.
Raji and Wendy were quite put out by the loss of their beloved oversized scratching posts. We eased their adjustment by installing window perches behind the loveseat. We also covered the loveseat with a little-used comforter to protect it from the sun and make it more comfortable for our cats should they desire to stretch out.
Raji (ginger cat) and Wendy (Tortieco) on their windowsill perches.
No one can say that we don’t try to do right by our kitties.
I hope all is well out there among my far-flung online community. My writing is going well enough for me. My writing course is taking a break (as scheduled) until April 1 when we’ll start Session Two with new prompts among other goodies. Life is going well for us.
We did the other grown-up thing with updating our Wills, Living Wills, and Durable Powers of Attorney for Health Care. If I learned anything in the last couple of years, it’s that you don’t want to leave your loved ones guessing.
For this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Ann-Christine encourages us to find the magical in our lives: According to Wikipedia, Magical can mean: ”…beautiful or delightful in a way that seems removed from everyday life.” She notes there may be other meanings, as you might guess with my selection of photos. Some photos are magical in their whimsy. Others are flat representations of awe-inspiring moments. One is a calm before the storm. They are all magical to me.
The Total Lunar Eclipse, or Blood Moon rising on Election Day 2022.
While not an award-winning photo of a Total Lunar Eclipse, I still feel a thrill when I see this photo, taken as it was with my (then) iPhone 8 Plus and a pair of binoculars. The moon is a force of magic and wonder, messing with the tides on our planet and in our bodies.
My iPhone was almost flat on the ground in order to get this photo.
Fungi always makes me think of fairies and folklore, and these pleated inkcaps entice me to image myself an inch tall running through a land where the mushrooms are as tall as redwoods.
The space between. Shot taken from airplane window on our return to Tallahassee from visiting family in New York, 2022.
I think of this photo as the calm before the storm, a magical space where, for a little while, my world was cushioned by soft clouds and endless blue. We were on our way back home after visiting my sister and family in New York. I didn’t know, at this peaceful moment, that the trip would be the last time I’d see my sister alive.
The horrible thistle is magical to me.
Anyone who has been following my blog for any length of time must know that I love the thistle. I know it’s called a “horrible thistle” because of the thick, sharp spines along the edges of its leaves. So, one looks but doesn’t touch. It’s still magical to me.
If we live here long enough, Raji might get to enjoy a blue bayou right outside our door.
Finally, a little magical whimsy: a photo of Raji superimposed on a photo taken at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. To stretch the idea of magic a little further, this kitty is himself magical. Although he still prefers not to be picked up, he is tolerating it more and has even developed a habit of curling up next to me on the loveseat when I’m reading, within arm’s reach of frequent pets and head scratches.
Now, what is Magical to you? Anything–people, places, and things, memories and feelings–are fair game. If you want to join in, please link to Ann-Christine’s original post and use the Lens-Artists tag so we can find you in the reader.
This week’s challenge comes from Amy of The World is A Book. She asks us to share our “cloudscapes over land, sea, or cities, or just clouds.” I love clouds and am often looking up to see what they’re doing, and just as often I trip over my feet trying to take photos of them. I knew I had a lot of photos of clouds stashed on my computer so I was up for this challenge. I slogged through, selecting this one and that one when I came to my collection of sunset photos taken when we were in Savannah, Georgia. They still take my breath away, although my photos don’t do true justice to what we saw that evening. The photos were taken in January 2016 with an iPhone 5S. No filters. Seriously, the colors you’ll see here are the colors I saw with my naked eyes.
I started “snapping” photos at about 4:23 PM and finished close to 6:00 PM. The scenery will change because I took photos at different angles along the Savannah River. Enjoy.
I hope you enjoyed this series. If you want to join in, make a link to Amy’s original post (click here) and tag Lens-Artists so you can be found through the WP Reader.
Anne Sandler from Slow Shutter Speed leads this week’s photography challenge with “what’s your photographic groove?” What a great question!
At heart, I’m a minimalist … although if you saw my bedroom/workroom, such a thought would have you laughing your arse off. By minimalist, I mean I don’t like having a lot of gear, which is why I really regret attending the going-out-of-business sales of a local quilting shop several years ago. I still have a lot of that stuff! But back to photography …
I still play around with a Canon Rebel T3i that I bought over ten years ago. My husband (who does love gear) provides me with nice macro and zoom lenses, and I can neatly fit the camera with the two lenses in a small case … which then weighs a ton. I fantasize about taking the camera and lenses with me on my morning walks, but I always have an excuse not to. One excuse is that it might be picking-up-litter morning, in which case I’ll also be carrying my gripper and a 13-gallon bag, which, in all likelihood, will be full by the time I get home. Another excuse–the more common one–is that I have my phone if I feel compelled to take photos. Besides, isn’t it more important to enjoy the sights and sounds of nature without always trying to “capture” it?
I try to do both.
Here’s where we get to my groove. My iPhone 8 Plus suits my minimalist nature. While I might have gotten better photos with my Canon, I feel satisfied for now with what my iPhone can capture. Case in point: the Pleated Inkcap (Parasola plicatilis), a fungus I found on a recent morning walk.
For scale, here’s my left index finger pointing to a Pleated Inkcap.
Dainty little things, aren’t they? One of the things I enjoy about photography in general and macro photography, in particular, is that I “see” more. These fungi sit close to the ground, and there was just one bunch of them. Still, to my delight, my eye caught them.
Don’t they look like dainty little flowers or parasols?My iPhone was almost flat on the ground in order to get this photo.This should give you some perspective on how low to the ground these fungi are.
So I guess my photographic groove is macro with an iPhone 8 Plus. For now, anyway. I’ve heard that the iPhone 14 is supposed to break new ground in iPhone photography. We’ll see …
If you want to participate in this challenge, please link to Anne’s original post (click here) and use the Lens Artists tag. As the LAPC team resumes rotation, Patti will present next week’s challenge. Be looking for her post. In the meantime have fun and stay safe.
Almost down to the wire with this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The lovely Ana has the lead on this week’s prompt: Postcards.
I would like to encourage you to participate, in any way you want. You can show us some of your pictures that you would send as postcards to someone you love. Or you can simply share with us images of your favorite places.
If you have a garden full of flowers, show us a beautiful and colorful collection of floral postcards. It doesn’t need to be your garden, It can also be your neighbour’s. 😉
If you have some real postcards it would be great if you would like to share them with us, I’m sure they have a nice story behind them.
I love postcards. Even today with my iPhone as a camera and the ability to share photos in real time, I still look for the best postcards when I travel. Some I keep for myself, some I send to others. Here’s a few I kept from our trip to Bridgeport, California where we married on August 21, 1989.
First, you need to know that back in the late 80s, we were living in San Francisco. In August 1988, I and my not-yet husband went on a car-camping trip through Nevada, returning to San Francisco via Bridgeport and Mono Lake. I fell in love with Mono Lake and its surreal tufa, or limestone, formations. We found a place for the night, and the next morning had breakfast in Bridgeport across from the county courthouse. Fast forward to the summer of 1989 where we are discussing where to go for our August vacation.
“Let’s get married,” he said in his matter-of-fact way. (I admit, we had been talking about getting married, but the plan was to wait until December.)
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as he did. “Where?”
“In Bridgeport, at the county courthouse. It’s a beautiful building.”
Swoon. Unbeknownst to him, my soon-to-be husband was revealing his romantic side. So we did, we married in Bridgeport and went car-camping in the White Mountains for our honeymoon. Here are some postcards from our trip. You can tell that I took photos of my postcards. They are pretty much stuck in the photo album we were given as a wedding gift.
The county courthouse is at the right in the uppermost postcard above and at the bottom in the postcard below. Some of these postcards also have photos of the tufa formations at Mono Lake.
Since it was a warm, sunny day, we chose to be married outside.
This last postcard is my favorite and captures well what Mono Lake looks like on an overcast day.
One of the things I had to do on our trip was “swim” in Mono Lake. I had read that because of the lake’s salinity, one would simply float on the water. I waded in only as far as my calves and couldn’t get out of the water fast enough. I had made the critical mistake of shaving my legs that morning. Talk about putting salt on wounds! Ha! I’ve never attempted it again although we’ve visited Mono Lake several times since.
I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the past. If you want to participate in this photography prompt (and there’s still time), please remember to link Ana’s post and use the Lens Artists tag. On Saturday, August 7, Patti will host LAPC #160 Your inspiration, which can be a place, a subject, a person, a book–just about anything that inspires you.
This week, Patti has us thinking about size–from large to small. Her instructions (or suggestions, depending on how compliant you aim to be … (smile)): For this challenge, pick a color and select several photos that feature that color. Start with a photo of a big subject in that color (for example, a wall) and move all the way down to a small subject in that same color (for example, an earring).
I was initially stumped until I started looking at how others were meeting the challenge. The dim bulb in my head got a little brighter.
The color I choose is pink. When I was in my late 50s, I had an obsession with the color pink. I was buying pink clothes, pink laptop covers, pink yarn, pink fabric. I drank pink lemonade. My desire for pink ran amok. I think it was because I actually hated pink when I was a little girl. Blue was my color then. So maybe my obsession was just making up for lost time.
Tina asks us to go from large to small, here goes …
Here’s a variety of pink in a light quilt that I made many years ago. In the photo, I am under the quilt. Wendy is cradled by my legs, her nightly routine.
Smaller than my quilt is one of my favorite shirts, which is mostly pink. It’s made of quick-dry fabric making it a great travel shirt, and the color has not faded at all in the many years I’ve had it. Whenever I need a visual pick-me-up, this shirt does it for me.
Smaller than my shirt is … wait! What’s Maxine doing here? No, she’s not pink-colored, but she does have a connection to the color pink.
Maxine’s story
Maxine showed up on our back porch in January 2009 and refused to leave (she knows a sucker when she sees one … or two). We made the usual effort to try and find her original staff. After a few days of no response to our inquiries, we took her to our vet to see if she was chipped. Yes, she was! We learned then that Maxine hailed from Miami (only about 400 miles south of Tallahassee), that she had been adopted in 2004 (making her five whole years old), and … wait for it …
her original name was Pink.
However, she’s forever Maxine (or Max or Maxie) to us.
Smaller than a cat–! I bet you all were wondering when I was going to sneak flowers into this challenge. I recently purchased this Gerbera daisy (aka Barberton Daisy). I could look at it all day and every day … which, actually, I do since it’s on my deck.
The flowers of my Madagascar Periwinkle are definitely smaller than the Gerbera Daisy.
Lastly, smaller than them all, one of my favorite earrings in pinkish glass.
I hope you enjoyed my answer to this week’s challenge. Remember, if you wish to participate in the From Large to Small, be sure to link to Patti’s original post and include the “Lens-Artists” tag.
Personal note: I’ve closed comments on this post. My husband is scheduled for back surgery on Friday. Although it is outpatient surgery and a relatively simple procedure, I need and want to give him undivided attention now and through his recovery. I know you all understand.
Stay safe, well, and happy. Be sure to tell the important people in your life that you love them.
For this week’s photography challenge, Diane of the Rambling Ranger is “talking about Mother Nature untouched and untrammeled, allowed to get on with her work without human help or hindrance.” Now that’s a real challenge, especially here in Florida where evidence of human help or hindrance is in overwhelming abundance. But Diane further notes that, “Even if your only access to the natural world is the local park, you will certainly find something wild in your world.” Okay, well, I do have some parks and forests around, and human help that I just can’t help but show.
In early April, my husband and I drove to a segment of the Apalachicola National Forest, expecting to find a field of pitcher plants, or more correctly, a Savannah wetland of pitcher plants. What we found instead were charred remains.
Above is my husband on the search for bugs and pitcher plants.
What we didn’t know was that the U.S. Forest Service had conducted a prescribed burn in the area back in late February. Prescribed burns are necessary to reduce the risk of wildfires and to maintain a unique ecosystem such as the Savannah wetland. Even though we were disappointed, I found good subjects to photograph.
Life on the rebound, especially among the pines.
Above are remnants of a hunting party, or maybe just a party. I actually did some trash pick-up while we were out, although I didn’t have enough bags to pick up this assortment of burned-out bottles. But see the green shoots … nothing can keep Mother Nature down for long.
A few weeks later, we returned.
What a difference six weeks can make! We were thrilled to find green everywhere and pitcher plants in abundance!
Pitcher plants are carnivorous, needing to get their nutrients from the insects that crawl into the pitcher part of the plant where they drown and are slowly digested. (It takes all kinds.) You can learn more about them here.
Looks like a moth is becoming food for this pitcher plant.
Tuberous grasspink
Including my hand for scale
Snakemouth or rose pogonia
Flowers were everywhere as well, such as these tiny orchids (above).
Mimosa pudica
Orange milkwort (?)
Coreopsis nudata–Georgia tickseed
This last (but not least) flower, I call “Jill’s Flower” because I think of her whenever I see a pretty combination of purple and yellow. (Y’all know I mean Jill Weatherholt.)
So, this is as wild as I get, folks. Given my achy-breaky knees, it was hard enough to squat down to get close and personal with the orchids, and then get back up.
I hope you enjoyed this walk on Marie’s wild side and will visit other photographers participating in this challenge.
If you care to join in, please remember to use the Lens-Artist tag and link to Diane’s original post (here). And heads up, next week’s challenge will be hosted by Patti and the “rules” are as follows: “From Large to Small. Here are the details: Pick a color and take several photos that feature that color. Start with a photo of a big subject in that color (for example, a wall) and move all the way down to a small subject in that same color (for example, an earring).“
This week, the challenge is from Tina at Travels and Trifles: “we are returning to the color wheel and its cooler members, which include blue (primary) green (secondary) and blue-green or blue-violet aka purple (tertiary). A visit to the web on the subject will take you deep into the emotions said to result from exposure to these and other colors. For this week’s purposes, let’s simply explore the many ways the cooler colors appear in our world.”
Let’s hear it for green and blue!
Hydrangeas are in full bloom in my neighborhood. The top two photos are from a corner bush on one street, the bottom from across my house. One of the many things I love about hydrangeas is how you can have different colors–from true blue to bluish purple to light purple–in the same bush.
This sign (above photo) has been up for the past year. You know why. I love seeing it.
This treasure (above photo) was spotted on our walk at the Timberlane Ravine where I had seen an assortment of figurines. (Story about that is here.) Some of the figurines are there, some have been taken, some have been added. It’s a thing, apparently, and I might participate by leaving one of my figurines there someday.
Here’s one of my own lovelies, a pot of Lobelia which we bought not just because it’s so pretty, but it’s supposed to attract hummingbirds. I haven’t seen the two hummingbirds that visit us seek out the Lobelia, but we also put out sugar water for them. Why go for a sip when you can have a big gulp?
I hope you enjoyed my contribution to the challenge. If you wish to participate, please remember to link your response to Tina’s original post and to use the Lens-Artists Tag. Next week’s challenge will be hosted by Dianne Millard of Rambling Ranger. Be sure to check out her blog and watch for her post next week.
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