Peonies are strange flowers. Ants love them they can be perfectly round and a half sphere, or they can be all squiggly. Here’s a few from my garden today! (Find the ants!)
White with Age
Aged Pink
White in Its Glory
Peony Drama
White and Scattered
White with a Tinge of Pink
The backyard is full of flowers and green. Where last week there was brown and a few blossoms here and there, today there are blossoms where there hadn’t been buds two days ago. It is like Spring is making up for lost time! So this afternoon, a few of those blossoms were captured.
The wind and clod and snow did not destroy all the Spring Flowers! As I walked around my backyard today to see what survived. The Scilla, Daffodils, Glory in the Snow, Windflowers and Blood Root are beautiful. I am promised a very large crop of Bluebells looking at the buds. The Trout Lily and Celosia Poppy are filling the ground with green. Not many leaves on the trees yet. But maybe we’ve turned the corner from Winter.
Glory in the Snow
Glory in the Snow
Lenten Rose
Daffodil
White Windflowers
Purple Windflowers
Bloodroot
Spring is messed up in the Midwest this year. The plants thought Spring arrived a few weeks ago, but then Winter came back. So daffodils are bowing down from the cold, scilla are closing their petals in the cold, and muddy wet soil is frozen in places. This is not a good sign for spring flowers blooming in abundance!
My Mom and Grandma always said there had to be a snow on the yellow flowers before winter was over. I think we qualify today.
Bluebels To-Be under Snow
Blue Scilla Drooping in the Snow
Snow on the Yellow Flowers
Mini Daffodil with Snow
Tiny Swamp Oak Leaves
Snow Pattern on Grass
I found a surprising bloom of a fall crocus in a place I don’t believe I planted bulbs. Not that I’m complaining. Fall Crocus blooms are always a surprise as leaves are falling and most plants have died back. They are a very delicate flower, with translucence and a very thin stem. They often shoot up higher than the stem can support the bloom and end up falling down to the ground. Not this one! It stood up tall and strong so that I could capture it delicate beauty.
The flowers continue to grow and bloom. The trout lilies are beginning, the bluebells are in full bloom, poppies are beginning, and buds are forming on a number of late-spring flowers.
Most of these were taken with my iPhone 6s and edited with the Snapseed App. I’m still limited in movement, so crawling on the ground to get the best vantage point is not an option this year!
I love Spring Flowers! I’ve planted many native flowers as well as bulbs over the years. Every Spring I capture their beauty, usually crawling on the ground and using a macro lens. This year, some physical issues keep me from crawling and getting low, but the flowers called to me. These images were captured using a long telephoto lens so I could capture them standing up. It was a windy day, but I managed to capture between wind bursts.
I will have a major crop of Bluebells and Trout Lilies in the next few weeks. Perhaps then I can get down and grovel in the dirt and get images from a low point of view!
I love Spring Flowers! Every year I collect an album of images from my yard, forest preserves and the Arboretum.
My clump of Snowdrops was in full bloom, and using the macro lens with a shallow depth of field, I focused on different blossoms in each image. I was on the ground and driveway laying down and scooting around to get different angles. My neighbors must have thought I was crazy! Which do you like best?
I recently attended a Macro Workshop led by Lou Nettelhorst to improve my macro photography skills. I did learn a lot, and was able to apply some of the recent experience in Studio Lighting as well. And, as always, I learned more about how to better use my Nikon D800!
In two photo sessions, I captured about 130 images. These four were the best of the best.
