281/365: "The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature." ~ Ansel Adams (5 inset images! :D)

5 more pictures in notes above plus 3 text notes! :)

I wanted to find something colorful to show today, so I gathered the dogs and out we went into our larger meadow. I knew where I was going, and after taking a few pictures along the way, I arrived at one of our wild rose bushes, which had many rose hips all over it! Another thing our wild rose bushes have on them are a kind of wasp gall which has several different names, "moss gall", "Robin's pincushion gall", or "rose bedeguar gall. You can see this gall behind the rose hips. When I first saw these, I thought it might be a special kind of moss, but I didn't see it anywhere else. Imagine my surprise when I found out it was a wasp gall!! The red and black wasp that creates these galls must be very common on our property because all of the wild rose bushes we have are completely covered with galls, but I have never seen them before.

If you would like to see what this wasp looks like, and read information about it, this page is wonderful: Bedeguar gall wasp Diplolepis rosae (Linnaeus, 1758) . Wiki also has a very good page with many pictures here: Wikipedia: Bedeguar gall wasp

Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist. His black-and-white landscape photographs of the American West, especially Yosemite National Park, have been widely reproduced on calendars, posters, and in books. Wikipedia: Ansel Adams

Explored on October 9, 2013. Highest placement, page 4.