A black iris finally bloomed. It’s purple in the back lighting, but it’s definitely black. I also included a white and yellow iris that had very nice form. There are a few iris that have survived the frosts and they will be done blooming in a week or two.
Café Giuseppe finally opened next door to our office. Currently he offers espresso, breakfast burritos and a few other breakfast and lunch type items. I think he is going to offer gelato, also, but i didn’t notice on the menu.
Fruit flies are invading now that it’s warming up. I got the one tonight on the white orchid. They are really tiny and hard to focus on in the low light, with my slow macro lens. I had to send back Le Long Lens this morning. Giuseppe’s place, the Indian jewelry store and photo of Heritage I posted this morning are the last photos taken with that lens.
Off Center & Not Even 
The fruit fly photo is pretty remarkable. I like the other photos also.
I’ve decided I’m going to buy a 100mm f/2.0 macro lens. I really love my current 70mm macro, but at f/3.5 it’s difficult indoors. I just photographed a cool spider in the house, but at f/3.5 at 1/15, ISO 100 (I didn’t have time to dink around an bump the ISO to 400) is challenging my steady hands. You can see the hair on the spider, but it’s still a little soft. I’ll post it tomorrow.
I know you will love it. My mom has some great lenses for her old Nikon (which fit Nikon digitals), but I have a Canon. I would love the f1.2, 50mm Canon, but that is not going to happen anytime in the foreseeable future. So, I’ll enjoy your lenses vicariously!
Are you enjoying WP? A very long time ago I used Nucleus, and WP has been my preferred platform since I found it, also quite a long time ago.
I was considering buying a 50mm 1.4 lens several months ago. It was $600, and we didn’t want to spend the money at the time. Now it’s $1400! The price increase might have a lot to do with the earthquakes in Japan, but the fact is I’m not willing to pay $1400 for a lens that was $600.
I haven’t even checked to see what the Canon is now, because it was $1400 before the earthquakes. Way out of my range!