Roadside flowers

Recently, I have been reading a great deal about macro and closeup photography.  I came across an article about showing wild flowers in their environment.  I went for a bike ride to see what I could find along the road.  These are a couple of my attempts at this form of photography.

"There are flowers for those who want to see them."  Henri Matisse

A Garden welcome

Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there.

Thomas Fuller

Summer

"Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.  A few days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world."

Ada Louise Huxtable

After the rain

There's a saying, "God made rainy days so that gardeners could get the housework done" (author unknown).  I think rainy days are for photographing the garden and enjoying the fruits of one's labour.

Bugs

"If you want to live and thrive, let the spider run alive."
American Quaker Proverb

Hosta

Much of my garden has always been hot and sunny.  Probably for that reason, I love plants that grown in the shade.  Their foliage is often dramatic.  Hostas are my favourite.  But rather than posting a photo of hosta leaves as I see them, I tried playing with filters to give them some drama.
  

Green was the silence, 

wet was the light, 

the month of June

trembled like a butterfly.

          Pablo Neruda

Wild creatures

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

William Shakespeare

Wasps, bees and flies finding food amongst the weeds.

This normally skittish prairie chicken has built her nest in my wild asparagus patch.  The nest is a small hole in the ground and is almost impossible to distinguish in the long grass.  I take my camera with me now when I go to pick asparagus.  I'm hoping to photograph her chicks when they hatch (although I'll be very surprised if I'm able to).  I speak to her softly while I'm picking and she does not leave her nest.

Morning in my garden

It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.

James Douglas

Iris

"In the garden, my soul is sunshine."

(anon)

The awakening garden

"Gardening is the purest of human pleasures."

Francis Bacon