Little critters

I must apologise for being so slack about writing in my blog. Just when I think I have my life organised so that it is all mine, I volunteer to help people "do things" and so find I have no time at all! Today I have a little time just for me so here I am again!!!
While chasing around in the garden with the camera in search of "small" things for the photographic topic for Visions I came across all sorts of little bugs and spiders. Some lived to see another day but some have hopped off to another planet.

My first photo is not of a Calendular - a rather large showy flower that is usually a brilliant orange colour, no, this is a much small flower that comes up every year in my garden - I bought the first punnet of seedlings about ten years ago and since then I have split them and moved them around the garden and they flower prolifically for about three weeks. Each flower is about the size of a ten cent piece. No way can I remember the name of it though. Sorry about that!
Now I come to the bugs. There were lots of tiny spiders - I was using a macro lens so those tiny spiders now look quite impressive and a bit scary.

Now this one looks quite fearsome! But when you remember the size of a begonia (tree begonia) flower you then may realise that it is very small indeed.
This is the web of another of my garden inhabitants.

I am not sure if Mrs Spider is inside the funnel or if she expects her prey to get trapped in it. The web covered quite a large area between leaves and must have been newly made because there was nothing trapped and it was undamaged in any way.

The last little monster was really small - the web was stretched between three leaves and the spider was weighting down the middle of it. I thought the spider was transparent until I focused the macro lens on it and saw that rather than transparent it was a subtle green colour. The fancy markings on the spider's body surprised me. With the naked eye I couldn't see it. (Mind you I do need glasses if I have to read anything!!!)
 There are plenty more bugs and critters crawling and hopping around in my garden. There are even some miniature grasshoppers that make lots of little round holes in the Chrysanthemum leaves and the ones I found I photographed and sprayed. I obviously did not manage to find all of them because I have found more "aerated" leaves since.
A little reminder before I close. Click on the photos if you would like to see them larger. Click on the "back" arrow (top left) to return to the blog.
AJ

Life in the garden

I was lucky enough to be given some plants today so that made me spend a bit of time in my garden. Once the plants (gerberas) were planted and mulch spread around them to make them feel comfortable, I dashed inside to grab the camera. The camera was not for these little new plants but for some naughty creatures that were munching their way along the big fleshy leaves of a spider lily plant.

It is possible to see the devastation these long creepy caterpillars are creating. This is a long leaf and only a few of the caterpillars are shown. There are lots of leaves and lots of caterpillars. Guess who will be using a spray can of insecticide tomorrow! I couldn't do it today because I wanted a photograph and I did try to encourage a nearby butcher bird to come down and help himself but he preferred the grasshoppers! The sprays I use are bird and lizard friendly. I am very reluctant to spray insects, preferring instead to let the natural predators do the work - but when it comes to such an act of vandalism as this . . .  action has to be taken! There are too many of them to go around squashing them!
There are many beautiful things in the garden at the moment. It is a real pleasure to be out there pulling up weeds and snipping off dead heads!

This is a Gloxinia and was bought in a moment of weakness last year. I bought two of them and after giving us a few weeks of colour they died back. I thought I had seen the end of them but being lazy did not dig them up and put something else in their place - just as well because they have been reborn! The strange thing is that this one, the first to flower, has reversed its colours. Last year it was purple and white but the throat was white and the edges of the petals were white! I wait with impatience to see if the red gloxinia has altered too!
Another of the beautiful flowers in my front garden is this daylily.

I think I might have eight different coloured daylilies and they are all "stunning". The individual flowers look fantastic for only one day - hence their name - and in the morning are completely withered and hang limply from their stem. Fortunately each stem has several flower buds so there is a reasonable flowering time. Over the years my plants have multiplied and I have spread clumps all through the garden beds so there are lots of flowers through November and into December. I love 'em!
Before I stop!
When Colin was putting the clippings through the mulcher (all my garden clippings go back onto the garden!) he found this little fellow.

This spider is very small - maybe one centimeter leg tip to leg tip. It looked a little like a tiny crab!
AJ

Creepy crawly

While enjoying a cup of coffee out on the veranda my eyes alighted on a white cross up near the roof. Of course I knew it was a spider's web but that did not stop me from taking a closer look. I could then make out the spider spread across his cross and decided I would try to get a macro shot of it using the Samsung camera.

The Samsung is a very simple automatic camera but like all point and shoot cameras it has many features on it that enhance its photo taking ability. One of these features is the Macro setting. To switch on "Macro" is a very simple action with the Samsung. One of the buttons on the back has to be pressed. Some cameras require you to go into the menu and search through many options to find Macro. However it is well worth checking your camera to see how to turn it on because it works very well indeed.

Once in Macro setting I reached up and tried to take my picture. I had to lean over the railing and reach up above my head while at the same time try to see what was in the screen and half press the shutter release to allow the camera to focus. The spider was a bit suspicious of my actions and zipped around to the other side of the web. I changed my position and he zipped to the other side again. It was quite frustrating!

I had three tries and two of them worked out. The first shot fired before the camera had locked the focus so it was not very sharp. With the spider on the same side of the web as myself it was a lot easier to hold the camera steady and actually see where I had it positioned in the frame!

If you can stomache seeing the spiders larger so you can see the hairs on its legs and the gleam in its beady eyes, just click on the picture. You will then see it larger than in real life!

Once the deed was done I was able to get back to my cup of coffee and let the spider relax again.

Nothing is safe from my cameras!

AJ