A journey of a thousand miles…

…begins with a single step.

Of course flying might be an even better choice.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #200 — Every Little Thing

Amy, I love you for choosing this theme, one that’s near and dear to my heart and camera. While I, like Tina, often do close-ups and macros from six feet or so away with my telephoto, the phone is also great for that type of shot. I deliberately didn’t include a flower with a bee, although I love those. Let’s see what I did chose and whether or not you like them.

My Christmas cactus in full bloom lured me into a great number of photos with its sensuous curves and beautiful color.

This unidentified but brave insect ventured much closer to these cactus spines than I ever would!

Our daughter had some beautiful gladiolus flowers, so I just had to get (a lot) closer.

One of these is not like the others.

Although I know many think me crazy for it, I long for some winter, real winter with cold and snow and ice, something we don’t get in the Phoenix area. But go south an hour and a half or so, then head up Mt. Lemmon and if conditions are right, you might spot frost in places where the sun hasn’t hit yet. Seeing some made my day. Really!

No little thing challenge can sneak by without another view, unpublished until today, of the alien-looking interior of one of our torch cactus flowers. I’m endlessly fascinated by them.

To bee in the sweet spot

for Six Word Saturday

Coming in on runway number one

taken with my iPhone 6s

for Debbie’s Six Word Saturday

Friday flowers…visitor

Just suck it up!

I completely forgot that the Weekly Photo Challenge is taking a vacation this week.  (Who said that was okay?)  I hope this works instead.  🙂

Walk with me, part 3

Over the river and through the woods… Well, over the prairie section and through the woods, to the Dupage River we go. On one side, the water piles up behind a dam/spillway, on the other, the river once again runs free. The heron, not spotted on this day, fishes on the wild side. I searched for the elusive frogs on the other side. Near the shore, I see a shot I like.

There’s more to see than just flowers and birds, though.  Look carefully and you’ll spot some very small residents.  This one was obliging enough to sit long enough for me to focus and shoot.

Shift my eyes (and camera) to the sky.  Quickly!  Got them.

I didn’t notice at the time, but I think there might be some x-rated insect action going on here.  Hard to tell though.  We didn’t cover that in the high school sex ed section of health class I taught back in the day!  Just an aside about that.  It was always deadly silent when I passed out the books and not nearly many students willing to answer questions during that unit!

One more section of the walk and we’ll have finished.  But there will always be other days.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Eye Spy…The eyes have it.

“Eye Spy“, this week’s theme, can be interpreted in a variety of ways, all of which I’m looking forward to seeing (with my eyes) throughout the week.  In this photo, the eye of the camera spied some visitors I hadn’t initially seen.  My eye saw through the eye of the camera and then also saw the eyes of the insect visitors, some of them sitting on or near what appears to be the eye of the sunflower.  The eyes have it!  Aye!

Wordless Wednesday…flying dragons

Wordless Wednesday…bugged in Wyoming