Posts Tagged ‘Garden’

A small dandelion alongside some small purple flower.

An even smaller blue flower (maybe half the size of a dime)

Extreme close-up of a small maple leaf from a baby tree

Labels: Dandelion, Maple Leaf

Was invited over to Dave and Charmaine’s for dinner last night, and I made a point of going to Charmaine’s well-stocked garden to take photos before the light disappeared completely.

To make a long story short, there were honeybees having a good time sucking nectar out of the many coneflowers (also known as Echinacea) so I got out the macro lens and started patiently taking pics. Those below are culled from about +130 I shot.

On this one you can see the three mini-eyes set between the two big compound eyes on either side.

Another rainy day. Needing a picture of the day, I ventured out into our backyard garden with the macro lens to see what there was to see and photograph.

Easily my favourite shot of the day: the underside of a grape leaf that had been rained on. I like the way that the droplets magnify the cells in the leaf.

Close-up of a lily spattered with rain drops.

A tall, purple plant with flowers also displaying water droplets.

Looks a bit like some soggy mop. I like the contrast against the dark leaves.

We have peonies in our backyard garden, on the verge of flowering. I saw that there were ants on every single bud. I had see this before, and didn’t think it a cause for alarm as I have never seen any damage done to the plant or to the flower, but had never looked into it.

What little I could find on the Web suggests that the ants are definitely not harming the plant in any way, though nobody seems to be entirely sure what they are doing.

Watching the ants it definitely appeared as though they were interested in some substance on the buds — the following picture shows a pair of ants with their pincers down on the split in the bud, seemingly touching the top surface but not doing any visible harm to the plant, or even gouging anything out of it. Whatever it is they are interested in must be on the top layer of the bud, perhaps a fine layer of liquid sugar or something similar. I also wonder if perhaps there is some benefit to the emerging flower, the ants likely driving away anything else that might do real harm to the plant.

A trio of dandelions on the verge of flowering

Close-up of a closed-up dandelion

Found this little guy lurking on the side of a tulip in our back garden. He crawled inside the closed flower soon after, settling in for the night.

Small fly on the underside of a leaf

Purple and white Bleeding Heart (Dicentra) flowers. Can’t help but think of the logo for “Hairspray” when I see these.

Fern “fiddlehead” unfurling.

White Bleeding Heart flowers close-up.

Labels: Bleeding Heart, Fern, fiddlehead, garden

Sick with a cold, so I stayed at home today. Still, I needed to take a “picture of the day”, so I bundled up and went outside to take some pics of the emerging flowers in our garden — in the pouring rain.

Trillium plants just shy of blooming

Labels: rain, trillium