Itsy Bitsy Spider

I never could get him to hold completely still, so the image is not as sharp as I like.

The total length of the spider is about 2 mm.  He has been busy building his web, so maybe I will get a better shot later.

Fuzzy waterfalls...

I will (maybe) make this my last shot from the Oliver Winery trip.  I took several photos focusing on various parts of this scene, and this is the one I like the best.  I especially like to fuzzy background.

Let's see, is it tab A in slot B, or is it tab B in slot A?

Honey, maybe we should read that book again......

Just a little goldfish

This is the mosquito control officer at the Oliver Winery (actually, one of several dozen).  In case you are wondering he is about 15 inches long.

The water wasn't really black--that's just the way it ended up after I removed all the junk floating on the surface.  They actually swim with their dorsal fin out of the water so it looks like miniature sharks in the lake.

Oliver Winery

The macro focus group of the Bloomington Photography Club had a photo shoot at Oliver Winery this morning.  They have absolutely beautiful flower gardens as well as a tasting room!  In addition to the flowers there were all kinds of interesting bugs including this dragon fly.

Garden 2010--Chapter 10

Every other week seems to be good enough to chronicle the garden now that the heat of summer is upon us.  Here is the image taken from the same place as the previous shots:

As you can tell, everything is growing like crazy!  I put up two quarts of frozen cucumbers this morning and picked about two quarts of green beans.  The lettuce has not bolted and the kale is still fantastic (this is the kale I planted last November!).  We are finally getting squashes (zucchini, crookneck and straight yellow), and even the beets are looking good.  While the tomatoes are not turning red yet (now baseball size!) it looks like we will have enough to feed everyone in the neighborhood (and they are nearly seven feet tall).  Only a few peppers have set, but all of the bushes look healthy.  My "potted plant" garden is also doing well except for the radishes (I just can't grow radishes).  It looks like excellent candidates for clay pot gardening are Swiss chard, leeks, lettuce, spinach and onions.  We are definitely moving into a "eating out of the garden" mode here!

Froggy

My sister-in-law has all kinds of cute things in her garden.  I like froggy.

A Taste of Bloomington

Last weekend was the annual "Taste of Bloomington".  It probably could have been labeled the "taste of heatstroke".  The temperature was in the low 90's, but the food was tasty.

We left before "Here come the mummy's" took the stage.  I'm getting too old to stay up late for stuff like this, and besides that we had already been to the Farmer's Market in the morning and the Art on the Square in the afternoon.  Bloomington just has too much going on in the summer!

Try keeping up with a kid..

Visited my sister-in law yesterday and her grandson was there.  Actually it looked like he was everywhere!

Speaking of nasty bugs

I wish I could get this guy to hold still, but I know I can't.  Mosquito larva are all over the place after all the rain this past week.  This is what they look like up close.  Keep in mind these guys are not very small--typically 3-5 mm in length, so if you see something wiggling around in water it most likely will soon be a mosquito.

Itsy bitsy bug

When I am sitting outside reading a book I keep seeing little bugs crawling across the page.  I'm sure you know the ones I mean, not big enough to see any detail, but just big enough to be seen.  Like me, you probably either brush them off or squish them.  If so, hope they don't come back in a super-size to seek revenge.....

This is 30 images taken with my Nikon D80 on the Nikon Alphaphot 2 and stacked using Photoshop. The maximum length of the little critter is less than 1mm.

Cleanup time in the spring!

Thanks to several neighbors the weeds are gone, the bushes trimmed, and new mulch laid at the entries to the neighborhood.

Photoshop and I removed the telephone poles and power lines at the 3rd street entrance to make it look nicer.  (I probably shouldn't have removed the stop sign and water hydrant--that's probably not legal!)

My current pest

I couldn't get a good picture, but this is the Eggplant Flea Beetle that is managing to destroy most of the eggplants in the garden.  I spray about every day, but somehow these little critters manage to come back and eat holes in all the leaves.  This guy is on the end of a toothpick and is about 1.5mm long.

More small flowers

One of my favorite flowers in and around the garden is the Forget-me-not.  These little beauties bloom nearly all summer and are easy to grow (some people actually call them weeds).  The flower in the photo below is probably 3-4mm wide.

Here it is in stereo:

Catnip! Catnip! Catnip!

Well, that's better than "bacon! bacon! bacon!" (in my opinion).  Having seen what catnip can do to my two feline friends I decided it worthwhile to obtain a good picture of a catnip blossom.  While there are all kinds of pictures on the web, they are all small (the flowers are only about 3mm wide).  They are generally described as "white with purple spots", and as you can see below they are.

I decided a stereo was worthwhile as well.

After the rain comes the...

Red toadstools?  With nearly an inch of rain every day for it seems like ages we are getting all kinds of interesting fungi sprouting up.  I found this one in the picnic area at Yellowwood.  there was a patch of probably a dozen or so, sizes ranging from 1/2" to 2".

Thousands should know....

But probably few will.  Any guesses as to where this mural is located?

Don't water me

These daisy's are located outside the inn at Spring Mill State Park.  I figure if Michigan's iron tulips are appropriate for my blog, Indiana's iron daisy's should be also.

Speaking of seeds..

Last fall I gathered persimmons at our favorite location near Lake Monroe.  I decided to try germinating the seeds this spring to see what would happen. After squishing all the fruit to get the pulp (yeech!) I dried the seeds and stored them until this spring.  It took about three weeks, but all four seeds I put in peat pots have germinated!  Below is a photo series for the past week (day1; day2; day3).  I plan on transplanting them when they get a few inches higher.

Garden 2010--Chapter 9

I missed chapter 8, but it probably wasn't much different from chapter 7!  The spinach is now gone (eaten by us and the bugs), the tomatoes are golf ball sized, we have little cucumbers, and the weeds are going crazy!  I have found several things that are definitely not worth growing: collards (destroyed by bugs), bok choy (immediately bolted), and radishes (I'm still trying!).

From a little seed....

I now have Shasta Daisy's all over the place.  I bought a packet of seeds last year and started some in a corner of my garden.  In the fall I transplanted them to various beds and they are now starting to really look good.

The flowers of summer

The only thing remarkable about these guys are that they are here.  I found that a liberal sprinkling of Cheyenne pepper on the lilies in the front yard made them much less tempting to the deer (and you don't really notice the slight orange ting on the leaves!)

More HDR from the campus

Here is another "campus view" using the HDR pro feature in Photoshop.

The picture is looking up Kirkwood from the Sample gates.

IU Campus in the summer

The nice thing about summer is that the student population is very low (compared to the school year), so you can actually take a few pictures that don't have several thousand people in them.  I walked around campus this morning and snapped a few shots of buildings that I don't have any good pictures of.  This is the Student Building rendered in HDR using Photoshop.

A classmate no one remembered.

I accompanied my wife to her 50th class reunion this weekend.  The weather was great (but hot) and she found that all of her classmates are now old.  I found this guy outside finishing up the buffet dinner (actually he and four of his friends), but I don't think he graduated with the rest of the class.

Thyme for the blossoms

Last winter I showed what the leaf of my thyme looked like.  It is now blooming (in the garden, not the garage!) so I decided to look at the flowers.  They are lovely (as are most flowers).  One wonders what pollinates these guys--the one flower is probably 1.5mm wide.

Learn to uncross you eyes and you can see it in 3D.

Burnet

This is why I like microscopes!  Burnet is a neat herb that I have grown in the garden for the past few years (it is a perennial) although I really haven't used it as a spice in cooking.  The rabbits tend to keep it well trimmed in the spring so I put a wire cage around it to protect it this year.  I saw the flowers yesterday and brought one in to see what they looked like up close.

Here it is in side-by-side stereo:

Tomatoes!

It's funny how you go out each day looking for the first tomatoes to set.  I think this is early for tomatoes, but perhaps not.

Last year was terrible for tomatoes, so perhaps this is a good sign.

Smell (and look at) the lavender

Lavender (Lavandula) is a wonderfully aromatic plant.  According to Wikipedia the lavenders are a genus of 39 species of flowering mints found worldwide.  Not only do the smell good, but the flower spikes are rather attractive.

Each of the little purple shapes is a bud for the flower, which is kind of neat closeup.  Below is a side-by-side  stereo of the flowers.

If you can't uncross your eyes for the above, here is the red/green anaglyph (not nearly as good as the side by side!).

Gopher Purge

I have had this in the garden for several years now, not so much for it reported ability to keep moles and gophers away, but because it is a neat looking plant.  I didn't think much about it until this year when it over wintered and suddenly "flowered" (if you can call these things flowers!).

I will certainly collect the seeds from this one for replanting next year, but I don't really think it works.