A Moment in Time…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the garden.

 

“I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.” – David Hobson

Magic in the Garden

The garden sure is magical, isn’t it?

When working in the garden the other day I noticed the light drifting in and out of the zucchini vines.

As it danced it’s way around the garden I noticed how beautiful it was when resting upon the blossoms tucked deep inside the vines.

So yes, off I went to grab my camera and a macro lens!

If you are interested in seeing a zucchini blossom in black and white, be sure to visit Monochromia this Thursday.

Enjoy the day!

Swallowtail Caterpillar

The Uphill Climb

Hide and Seek

The Contrast in Motion

The End of the Line

This evening when I went out to get parsley from the herb garden I found these interesting, beautiful creatures.  I was not sure if they were caterpillars or some type of pest similar to a tomato worm just visiting to take what remains of the summer herbs.  I  ran inside to research my find and found that the Swallowtail Caterpillar apparently loves to eat Parsley.  The Swallowtail Butterfly drops her eggs on the Parsley plant in July and by mid- September the caterpillars have grown and live off of the plant until time for their transformation.  Nature is so amazing.  Little miracles exist all around us and are just waiting to be discovered.  Keep your eyes open, they are often in disguise.

Just a side note about the photographs.  This afternoon was rainy, and cloudy, and very, very windy.  With that said I wanted to keep the shutter speed as high as possible, wanted to avoid additional noise so kept the ISO at 400, and therefore had to have the aperture pretty open at 5.  As a result, the shallow depth of field and some motion blur give way to images that are not quite crisp, but I don’t think this fact takes away from the overall capture.

Vegetables Aplenty

Fruits of our “gardening” labors.

Eggplant bloom

Small eggplant.

Eggplant we’ll grill for dinner.

Tomatoes – cannot wait until the turn red!

Green beans. We’ve already had enough for a meal.

Zucchini

Carrots

Cucumbers

Lettuce. We’ve already had 6 cuttings with more awaiting. The salads have been delicious!

The Garden is Ready

It was a beautiful day to work in the garden and prepare it for spring planting.  The strawberry plants are full of blossoms and strawberries are growing. The weeds are gone and lettuce is planted, thanks to a team effort by the Graham Crew.

One of many strawberries we found on the vines today.

Even Daisy helped! She spent most of her time exploring the garden and enjoying the interesting smells, but John couldn't resist this pose!

Daisy loves to drink from the garden hose.
John watering the lettuce seeds...hope our crop is as good as last year! We planted three types of lettuce this year.

The strawberry blossoms.