just rambling about … enjoy the "post"-cards
Yes, I’m still in the garden. It’s that thing called a summer cold which dragged me down for 2 weeks (!) and the only place I have enough energy to get out to is the herb garden. I know that I’m supposed to pick the flower heads off the basil because it makes the leaves taste bitter. But I’ve failed in this regard and photographing them seemed less labourious. It’s less exciting without the bee, but far more delicate.
~ Spotted Cow
I was using the macro lens in the garden (again), set on manual, aiming to get a precise focus on whatever it was. Ahh, a bee landed on the basil flower. Perfect. When I sat down to edit the images, I realised the level of detail I had on the bee … because of course, I was standing at a respectful distance. Seeing the bee’s eye, its bee’s knees and all its limbs in high definition gave me a case of the heebie-jeebies. Grimace.
Click to see the photo at large and tell me if you feel the same.
~ Spotted Cow
This week’s photo challenge Inspiration theme lingered with me for a bit after I posted my image. It reminded me that greenery enhances creativity. If your workspace doesn’t look out onto a lovely garden or lush forest, don’t despair. Surround your work area with pot plants. The empirical studies suggest that you will have 15% more ideas, and more creative ones at that. I’m off to water my plants now.
~ Spotted Cow
When I was an inexperienced photographer, I didn’t like the rain. I thought it spoilt the already-poor potential for my perfect picture.
However, over the years, I’ve come to embrace the drizzle. And the fog, the mist, the clouds, and the overcast sky.
So that’s what I did when my folks said they wanted pictures of their garden plants. They’re keen gardeners and they wanted some of the images on the walls indoors. It was a rare rainy day during my Sydney summer holiday, and I thought, why not. The raindrops will add some fresh-ness to the petals and the leaves.
~ Spotted Cow
I love kangaroo paws. The plant, that is. They remind me very much of Australia. I love their fuzzy closed petal hands that really do look like paws. And when they open up, they are like little star bursts. Their bright garb attracts the birds. Get this – each species of kangaroo paw deposits its pollen on different parts of a bird so that the pollen doesn’t get mixed up between the species. Isn’t that clever ?
~ Spotted Cow
I took the picture of the onion flower because it was very pretty, and just perfect using a fairly shallow depth of field setting (f5.6), against an out-of-focus field of poppies in the background. Ideally I should’ve used a macro lens, but I didn’t have it with me.
Did you know that onions produce flowers because they are stressed – like when there’s a cold snap in the transition of the seasons or if it’s been a baking hot summer. It’s called bolting, and you want to prevent if from happening.
If only human beings would flower when they become stressed. The nearest thing we do is turn red and florid of face. Yeah, not nearly as pretty as the onion bolting.
~ Spotted Cow
After our aborted attempt, we visited the Koko Crater Botanical Garden on another Honolulu day out. It was delightful and leisurely and it wasn’t as crowded as the trail to the top of the crater. In fact, it wasn’t crowded at all. The botanic garden is stretched out across the crater floor and with the crater heights forming the walls, we felt like we had a Green Kingdom to ourselves.
In the loop walk, we saw all kinds of strange plants – one that looked like a star fish, another that looked like a green spaceship with orange protrusions, bulbous boabs, hairy monster trees, giant odd pods. My favourite was the cactus garden. It had a medusa cactus, big as a van and super spiky, that looked like it was out to get you. And stalactite cacti, extra thorny, which hung down from tree branches.
I’m making up all the names because there were few signs. Enjoy the pictures. They are a mere subset of what we saw.
~ Spotted Cow
Wandering Cows 
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