Lions In The Grass

Day 123: Four sequential haiku upon the less pleasant side of the growing season:

Lions in the grass!
Mowing season comes too fast.
The gardener tills

And toils at growing
Fruits and veg, but loses ground
To damn-de-lions.

Weeds win the battle
For root space in weary soil,
Exhausted by them.

Go on safari!
Hunt them into extinction!
Damn-all-de-lions!

Kaleidoscopic Dandelion

Day 158: Spring is here! With it, the first of the dandelions has opened in my yard and, while not a particularly interesting subject photographically speaking in the natural view, they do lend themselves nicely to special treatment with software. In this instance, I used the "kaleidoscope" feature on a square-cropped image with the flower centrally located. My initial reaction upon seeing the result was, "Quilt!" although it would be horribly tedious to piece as shown. That said, it could be simplified fairly easily to use as a block pattern or, with a bit more modification, as the layout for an entire quilt top. Fiber artists often draw their designs from nature. Photo software gives us yet another tool, sometimes shortcutting a few steps in the inspirational process. No, I'm not likely to be making this one myself, but perhaps my dandelion will seed itself in the back of another quilter's mind.

Concealment

Day 202: While walking around in my yard yesterday, I spotted a specimen of Misumena vatia on a dandelion, but my shadow fell across the flower as I knelt down to take a picture, startling the spider and sending it into concealment. I went out again today and on the same dandelion, saw what I presume to be the same spider, but once again, some vibration or fluctuation in the light alerted it to potential danger and it disappeared beneath the petals where it was out of sight from my eyes, but not from my lens. This species has often taken me by surprise when I've gathered ox-eye daisies (an invasive which should carry no guilt about picking) or other light-coloured flowers. It has a particular affinity for dandelions in western Washington and although its colouration is highly variable, the whitish-yellow form is arguably the most common. The pigmentation observed in any individual spider can change over the course of a few days, depending on the colour of the flower it inhabits.

Garden Colour

Day 163: One of these things is not like the others, much to my dismay, and it heralds the approach of lawn-mowing season, something I tend to forget about over the winter months. It always takes me by surprise. Some morning, I'll look out the window and the grass (that coarse, sharp-bladed species which as kids, we stretched between our thumbs to make a whistle) will have sprung up to half the height of the bird-feeder poles. I don't have "lawn." I have a few blades of thin green stuff sticking up through moss, hawkweed, and assorted other unpleasantness. The sharp stuff grows in clumps where the poor soil contains any small amount of organic matter. It is astonishingly resistant to treatment, even (gods forbid!) Round-up. Naturalist that I am, when lawn-mowing season begins, there are two alternatives which spring to mind: a flame-thrower, or perhaps two or three acre-inches of green asphalt. What idiot decided houses should be surrounded by lawn?

Dandelion Madness

Day 190: They say that everything has a purpose. I will allow that (given the possible exceptions of mosquitoes and ticks), especially after creating this "happy accident" from a reasonably boring "Little Big Shot" macro of a dandelion seedhead. I hadn't even noticed the rainbow refractions until I'd completed the "orbifying" process. That's one of the fun things about Orbs: you can't predict the results to any great degree. Admittedly, Orbs may be only slightly higher in rank with regard to purposelessness as those ticks and mosquitoes I mentioned, but I think "eye candy" has its merits.