365 Alternates

This is a view from behind this pretty flower so you can see the beautiful green textured tube that it grows from. So lovely to see bunches of them, they took my breath away! From Wikipedia: White Campion is a dioecious flowering plant in the family Caryophyllaceae, native to most of Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is a herbaceous annual, occasionally biennial or a short-lived perennial plant, growing to between 40-80 centimetres tall. White campion grows in most open habitats, particularly wasteland and fields, most commonly on neutral to alkaline soils. Despite the wide array of conditions in which campion can thrive, it prefers sunny areas that have rich and well-drained soil. An example ecoregion of occurrence is in the Sarmatic mixed forests. It is also named the Grave Flower or Flower of the Dead in parts of England as they are seen often growing on gravesites and around tombstones. It is naturalised in North America, being found in most of the United States, the greatest concentrations of the plant can be found in the north-central and northeastern sections of the country. S. latifolia is thought to have arrived in North America as a component of ship ballast.

While I was examining a flower, I noticed a bit of movement nearby and found myself in a staring contest with this cute little guy! He was bold enough to stay for pictures, so I can share him with the world! :)

These flowers are such delicate beauties, I never tire of staring in wonder at their lovely faces. Each blossom lives but one day, but each plant yields many flowers on their extremely strong stems! The usefulness of this plant's strong fibers has been recorded back as far as 30,000 BC!!!! If you would like to know more about this remarkable and useful plant, Wiki has a super page about it here: Wikipedia: Flax

Here's a closer view of this pretty flower...I think it looks like a mop! I discovered this flower last year and managed to get some really wonderful pictures, including one of my all-time favorites! Scroll down to see them! :)

A sprig of grass kept popping in front of my lens while I was taking pictures of the Foothill Clover blossoms, and then I noticed how beautiful it looked with sunshine causing it to glow. I like this picture so much that I can't decide which is the better choice for my 365! (If you compare this picture to my 365 image, you'll see the pair of blossoms are in both! :D)

A couple of weeks ago, Steve and I visited our friend's property and I spent the day happily taking pictures. This honey bee was one of dozens buzzing around these purple flowers!

Steve and I went to visit one our friends last week, who has a beautiful property in southern Oregon. I spent hours wandering around taking pictures, and this is one of my favorites. Noticing the glowing leaves, I moved around until I found myself underneath the branches, looking up through the leaves. Such a sight...aren't new leaves amazing?!!

A few months ago, Steve and I went to visit a friend our ours who lives on a lovely piece of property on the edge of Oregon and California. She and her husband have an amazing garden and landscaping, and I have had the opportunity to spend two afternoons taking pictures there. Down by one of their Koi ponds are a few of these interesting trees which are simply COVERED with seed pods. I was fascinated by their shape and awesome textures, and wondered if I would be able to capture the glow of one with the sun's rays shining through it. To my immense delight, I was successful, and in fact, its possible to see the seeds inside!!

Yesterday I showed a picture of a white thistle bud. Today I am showing a group of flowers, and on the right you will see the bud in yesterday's picture! :D

A couple of days ago, Steve and I visited a friend of ours who has a lovely property overflowing with gardens and wild lands. We went for a ride on their ATV and along the way back, we stopped and I got this picture of a white thistle bud!

This is another image I got from yesterday's pictures of the lizard skin caught in a web. You can see that this web has also caught some seeds where the end of the tail is caught! How odd and abstract! :D

Talk about a lucky day! A honey bee AND a bumble bee IN FLIGHT in one day?!!! For me, that's AMAZING!! The bumble bee was flying around quite quickly, but this honey bee did a lot of hovering and slow flying which helped a lot!

This morning I planned to cross our smaller meadow and look in our lower forest for flowers growing there, but I didn't get that far. On our gravel driveway we have tiny daisies that bloom every May and June, oblivious to the fact that it's dry as a bone there with zero nutrient to sustain anything. Up they pop, and this is one of the very first this year!

I saw a smudge on the wall on our porch and at first I thought I was looking at the cast-off shec of a spider. But when I looked closer, I realized it was alive and eating a tasty meal! I don't know what kind of spider this is but I think it's really super cool!! :D

I found this beautiful yellow crab spider in our smaller meadow this morning! He must have come from a yellow flower, as his color hadn't changed to reflect his new ambush spot yet. It takes a couple of days before their color shifts, but these wonderful camoflauge artists can change to match many colors in nature to blend in!

1 picture above in a note :) Here is the same image after using Topaz Lab's Black & White Effects. I chose a lavender wash and I really cannot say which version I prefer...do you like one better than the other?

1 picture above in a note :) I took this picture quite a while ago and decided to save a version in a lavender-tinted b/w as well, which you can see in a note above or in the next picture. Do you like either one better?

Here's a picture I took this morning of droplets on rose petals!