fourpointedstar

I have some friends who will bring along spray bottles to add water drops to plants to make the image pop, but for this flower, the staff at the conservatory did the work for me!

Sometimes a photo is already lined up for you, like this blossom. I did have to stand on my tiptoes to capture the image with the green leaf behind the red blossom, and then take the photo several times in order to get the pistil in focus.

I walked right past this plant while complaining that I hadn’t taken enough photos of blossoms. Sarah kindly pointed out that the purple blossoms were almost radiant; I’d walked right past the plant because most of the blossoms were wilted and past their prime. The yellow stamen are almost creepy.

I love seeing other people’s photos, and recently I saw a photo of a single cactus blossom from a photographer that was perfect and beautiful. I don’t like my image quite as much as theirs, but this cute blossom was absolutely perfect for the photograph.

The tiny blossoms on this cactus were the perfect cluster of beauty for my macro lens. The sad thing about macro photos is that I have no clue what the remainder of the plant looks like now.

I guess I’ve never really paid attention to the spines on various cactus plants, but I have definitely never noticed a cactus’s spines that are quite as curvy as this cactus’s are! I love the almost “barrier” like feel to the repeating leaves, if that’s what you would call them, and the repeating pattern makes me wonder if there’s a mathematical system behind their arrangement.

I felt very bad for this little spider; it was just blowing in the wind on this tiny flower and twitching its legs every time that another insect came by. There was just 1 problem, this little spider was about the size of a grain of rice, and the bugs that were coming by? They were several times its size.

This was the busiest of the busy busy bees. This little worker buzzed all over gathering pollen and in the meantime, got themselves absolutely covered in pollen. Just take a look at this zoomed in version of the same photo!

When you’re growing up, you learn “facts” that stick with you and you later learn are more “general rules”. Two that come to mind are “humans have five senses” and “moths have antenna that are fuzzy or comb-like”. Well, this is a Ailanthus Webworm Moth, and not only does it not have fuzzy antenna, but Wikipedia says that until it’s in flight, it resembles a beetle. Second grade science class was just full of lies!
(The senses of motion and balance are great examples of “other” senses.)

Back in 2010, I photographed this type of insect with my iPhone. We were on a trip to see a friend on the south side of Chicago, and I remember the photograph because it was one of the first “good enough quality” photos with an iPhone that I’d taken.

Two weeks ago, when I took the above photograph of the same type of insect, I thought to myself “that’s odd that I haven’t see an insect like that in a very long time.” I photograph insects every year, and I wondered why I hadn’t seen such a unique insect in over ten years. According to Wikipedia, they only travel this far north some summers and are more of a southern insect.

The NENA Butterfly Garden doesn’t just have butterflies, but like the variety of plants and flowers, there is a variety of insects as well. I always love finding these damsel flies and watching their movements.

Last year, we began completely recreating our south-facing yard as a prairie with native plants. I have always loved the look of these and their gorgeous stringy mop of a hairdo!

Watching the ants crawl across the peonies is a special kinda of therapy; my goal when attempting to capture this photo was to get an ant in the photo. The ants, however, we’re very cooperative, so instead I captured a bit more abstract of an image.