Re-Focusing

A Bug Safari

This morning I was staring at the work in progress. I was blinking, the cursor was blinking, and the inside of my head was a vast echoing empty space. Coffee wasn’t helping. In fact, coffee was making me restless. It’s too daggone hot to grab my gear and go for a nice nature walk, so I did the next best thing. I went on bug safari.

Hunting tiny prey among the grasses, focusing carefully on them as they flit from flower to flower, it requires intense concentration. I’ve found before that it helps me to regain a proper sense of perspective and this morning, I knew I only had so long, while the sun was rising, to go from cool sleepy bugs to roasted photographer. I couldn’t spend too long at it, and while my day away. Sometimes I can do this for hours. Today was more like forty minutes.

Which worked. I came back in, edited the hundred-odd shots I’d taken into perhaps a dozen decent ones. Played around with post-processing. And now, you get to see what I saw.

I planted wildflower seeds (a native mix) this spring in a bare spot. It wasn’t very big, and it was a spur-of-the-moment thing when it became obvious the fruit tree planted last fall hadn’t made it. To my delight, I have Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia) dominating, with it’s big velvety hot orange and scarlet blooms.

I started zinnias from seed, and hand-sowed some as well, which are blooming happily. As the heat and dry wear on they will die off, but I will reseed to have a second flush of blooms later, hopefully.

The grapes on the arbor by the mailbox are bearing heavily this year, happy with all the rain we have had. I think they are about ripe and ready. When I walk up to the arbor I can smell them, sweet and fruity.

A Euphorbia Bug on, you guessed it, a Euphorbia. This is a common weed related to the Christmas Poinsettia.

The challenge of course is to find the little creatures to shoot. I’m doing this freehand, so they are moving, I’m moving as I breathe, and the breeze is picking up. I did get a few shots mostly in-focus.

This Shiny Flea Beetle is sharing a leaf with a tachnid fly.

There were many Lasioglossum bees on the fennel flowers early this morning.

A Common Picture-Winged fly eating her breakfast.

Another tachnid fly, Tachnids are parasitoids, largely, which means they help control pests in the garden. As annoying as they are when persistently landing on you or hovering around food, the presence of these little guys means less things eating your plants.

A Grass Lynx Spider with grass flower for scale.

It was too early and cool for most bees, but the tiny Lasioglossom just don’t stop.

Now, I’m off to talk to my son about what his plans are for the day, and hopefully have the time to read back into the series for my writing. I’m starting work on Tanager’s Fleet. I still need to finish the editing passes on Following Trouble as my editors had fun with their red pens on that story!

Back to work with me! I’m refreshed and re-focused again.