Seen in Government Gardens, Rotorua. Was it really two weeks ago already? Image: Su Leslie 2019
bees
Hidden from the naked eye
The moment of pupation. Monarch caterpillar transforming into a chrysalis. Image: Su Leslie 2017Macro photography truly does change the way it’s possible to see the world; focusing in on tiny details unobserved by the naked eye, and saving them as so many pixels on a computer chip.
Emerging butterfly. The fully formed Monarch butterfly breaks free. Image: Su Leslie 2017
All that remains of the Monarch’s chrysalis stage.. Image: Su Leslie 2017From the life-cycle of a monarch caterpillar to the fine hairs on a bee’s body, what seemed hidden is revealed.
Bee and blossom. Image: Su Leslie 2017Posted to Hidden | One Word Sunday, hosted by Debbie at Travel with Intent.
Feast
Making a feast of the garlic chive flowers. Image: Su Leslie 2018
Last autumn, a large clump of garlic chives in my garden flowered prolifically and proved incredibly popular with the neighbourhood bees.
Bee buffet. Image: Su Leslie 2018
I spent part of one afternoon mesmerised by the sheer number buzzing around the flowers, and trying to capture the scale of the feast with my camera. Photos just don’t do it justice, and I didn’t think to switch to video mode.
Less enjoyable, but no less fascinating, last year I watched a preying mantis make short work of a monarch caterpillar. It really was a bit gruesome, but of course not all of nature’s creatures are as attractive as bees.
Preying mantis devouring Monarch caterpillar. Image: Su Leslie 2017
Or perhaps vegetarianism is easier to watch.
DP Photo Challenge: prolific
Prolific. Both the chive flowers themselves, and the bees feasting on their pollen. Image: Su Leslie, 2018
Our local bees seem to really love pollen from the garlic chive flowers. I guess the prolificacy of one encourages that of the other.
This week the Daily Post Challenge is to interpret prolific. And since it’s Friday, how better to do that than with flowers.
Garlic-infused honey, at source?
If Manuka honey is valuable because the beneficial properties of the plant are transferred to the honey, do bees snacking on garlic chive pollen make honey with the extra cough-curing power of garlic?
Just wondering.
Friday flowers
Friday Flowers
Seven day black & white challenge: day 1
Hard at work; I know the feeling. Image: Su Leslie, 2017
Both Elsie at Ramblings of a Writer, and Lucile at Sights and Insights invited me to join this challenge, and I offer apologies to both for taking so long to get started.
So here we are.
“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
I invite Janet at This, That and the Other Thing to come along if she would like to.
Friday flowers
Cavolo nero flowers. Image: Su Leslie, 2017
The cavolo nero I’ve been enjoying all winter from the garden is going to seed and producing heads of beautiful yellow flowers. The bees love them.
Image: Su Leslie, 2017
Regular random: five minutes with some lavender, a bee and the hope of new beginnings
Lavender lunch. Image: Su Leslie, 2017
Lavender lunch. Image: Su Leslie
Coming in to land. Image: Su Leslie, 2017
Lavender lunch. Image: Su Leslie
Lavender lunch. Image: Su Leslie
Lavender lunch. Image: Su Leslie
The images for this week’s Five Minutes of Random (the #RegularRandom challenge) were all shot at Savage Memorial Park on Bastion Point in Auckland.
Savage Memorial is the burial place and monument to Michael Joseph Savage, New Zealand’s first Labour Prime Minister — and one of the country’s best loved leaders. He died in office in 1940, having led the government that established our country’s welfare state — now largely dismantled by successive neo-liberal governments.
Tomorrow there will be a general election in New Zealand. Growing inequality, increasing poverty, declining child health and the highest youth suicide rate in the developed world are all issues that have come to the fore in this campaign, and there is real hope that by tomorrow evening we may have a new government. One committed to the values of compassion and justice that informed Savage’s Labour government in the 1930s.
Spring is, after all, the season of hope.
Five Minutes of Random (the #RegularRandom challenge) is hosted by Desley Jane at Musings of a Frequently Flying Scientist.
If you’d like to join in:
- choose a subject or a scene
- spend five minutes photographing it – no more!
- try to see it from many angles, look through something at it, change the light that’s hitting it
- tag your post #regularrandom and ping back to Desley’s post
- have fun!
Friday flowers
Seen at the Savage Memorial, Bastion Point, Auckland. Image: Su Leslie, 2017
