I followed a honey bee around with my macro lens as it made its way through the peach blossoms.
Tag: insects
Lying Around
I saw a headline that NASA was paying people $18,000 to lay in bed for 70 days. I didn’t take time to read the article, but I started thinking about how it would be impossible for me to lie in bed for 70 days when I can hardly lie down for 20 minutes to ice the incision from surgery this morning.
We checked in at the hospital at 6:00 am, and got back home about 11:00 am from getting a couple of hernias fixed. I have a pain pump hanging off my shirt, have had a bird on my shoulder most of the afternoon, a bag of ice in my pants off and on, and a gathering of big, fat, bad kitties temping me to pick them up. The pain pump is filled with a local anesthetic that will keep the surgical area numb for a couple days to enhance healing, and reduce the need for narcotic pain killers. I haven’t had any pain so far, and so I have been feeling rather perky. When I do lie around on the deck, I watch and photograph critters, clouds and the the occasional Osprey that flies by.
Ladybug
I got up close and personal with a ladybug after going out to check the water level in the Rio Grande at 7:30 am. The river was back to normal with no indication that the water got higher than in was in my photos from yesterday’s blog. I was going to go out and see what the water level in the river was when I woke up at 2:00 am, but it was pouring rain, so I stayed in bed. We got another 3/4 inch of rain over night giving us a total of 9 inches for the year.
The white flower was blooming on the levee in the early morning and the rain drops on the roses where like viewing the world through tiny crystal balls with my macro lens.
SLF
Sandias, lizard, flowers (SLF). Laurie saw a baby lizard in the leaves under the bonsai stand on the deck. It was really cute and like most young folks these days, seemed to love being photographed as it moved out closer to my macro lens and hammed it up a bit. There was an alert for a missing child in Corrales this afternoon which had the Chanel 7 chopper circling around above us. I drove out to see if there was any action around the fire station, but nothing much was going on, so I drove north and got nice light on the Sandias. There was an alert on our phone when I got back that they found the missing child. Laurie planted a bunch of different flowers that started coming up in July, but the hail storms beat them down to the ground. They finally recovered and we now have a garden full of cosmos and other flowers. The birds and the bees are very happy.
Sun Bees
Bees enjoying a sunflower and the sun.
Yellow and Green
The little yellow butterflies, brown eyed Susans and sunflowers are coming out in force. The two tiny butterflies in the last photo lined up for takeoff on a leaf — I told them they weren’t cleared for takeoff until I finished photographing them.
These Eyes
This jumping spider has plenty of eyes to cry for it’s lost love. Rosencrantz looks nice in stripes, and now that our butterfly bushes are blooming they are attracting all kinds of insects, like the scarab in the last photo.
Rio Guadalupe Canyon
NM 485 becomes a one lane road as it enters Rio Guadalupe Canyon, so we parked on a wide pullout about 1/4 mile from the mouth of the canyon, and walked along the edge of the road into the canyon. After photographing the “Falling Rock” sign, I turned around to find a humming bird moth working the flowers in the brush behind me. The first guardrail along the road was covered with graffiti.
Lost in Spam
Spam is the scourge of the Internet age. I get one legitimate comment on this blog for every five spam comments, and only about one in 100 emails is legitimate. There are sometimes useful things like grasshopper tobacco cures cancer, miracle weight loss with urban sunflowers, and how to make yourself irresistible to women drivers. On the other hand, I hate Dr. Oz and even if a “Flex Able” hose is the “end all” for garden hoses, I would never buy one. Then there are the emails from DHL telling me there’s a problem with my package. I assume they are euphemistic male enhancement emails. But the spam messages that really get me are the ones notifying me I’ve been inducted, or more like abducted, into the “Who’s Who of Professional Women!” I’m not sure when I became an honorary woman, but I’m told I’m a “Who” among them according to the daily emails. I guess I have no standing as a professional man since I have never received a notice of being a “Who” among men. As much as I mark these spam mails as spam, they just come double or triple — one or more to my in-box and the rest to my spam filter — keeping me lost in spam.
Sharing
A bee and wasp were foraging on the same plant, which I found interesting. The double-winged damselflies are out, and a tiny crab spider was hanging out on a red rose.
To show Sarah the ghost photo from last week, I searched for “Ghost” in the search field in the upper right-hand corner of the page which brought up “Ghost Under a Full Moon” followed by “Stretch 2004 — 2013 RIP”. Sarah noticed that the ghost in the left-hand edge of the photo looks like the young Stretch in the photo below it from the search. The photo of the ghost was taken near Stretch’s grave.
Off Center & Not Even 