The same bromeliad as two years ago seems to like it here. This time it bloomed with two blooms. Before it is to bloom, the leaves get red as seen here.

When the sun gets higher in the sky the bromeliads know to bloom. This one is in a southern exposure in my kitchen and right now (March) is in full bloom along with one of its buddy bromeliads. This is a focus stacked image as necessitated by the long thin nature of the bloom and in order to get the bloom and the leaves sharply into the frame on a macro lens.

Beggar Tickseed (Bidens aristosa) is a native species which is just gorgeous in the fall. There is a golden brilliant yellow along roadways and in meadows. I had never seen it further north so it must like mild winters. It is called tick seed because the seeds will grab on and take a ride with you.

Jewelweed is about my favorite wild flower. I had loads of it in the stream bed of my previous home but I only know one place where it's found near me now. And this is it. There is another version taken from my previous home following this one.

This tiny flower grew along my stream and near my pond in Maryland. It looks like an orchid but is not. The whole bloom is about one half to one inch across. This is not focus stacked but was taken in situ.

I have some other asters in this gallery but this is from this year's bloom which is just starting.

Indian Blanket is a native plant. It is at the end of its season in early September. There is a bud or two, and a bedraggled bloom here and there but most have gone to seed. It is a tough plant. When I was a kid we had some growing at my house in soil where nothing else would grow.

Again, another native plant from a garden not too far from me.

This is a different take on the Obedient Plant, a native in the US East.

There is an older version of these blooms further on in this gallery. This one is from this year, 2023. It is manually focus stacked at f22, which works pretty well. The plant grows in clumps and this one is from a big clump not far from Jordan Lake. It is called "sensitive" because when the leaves are disturbed, they close up as they are here.

This is not a plant I am familiar with in the part of the country I am from. It is abundant in NC growing in large bunches along the roadside. It has pea-like pods, hence perhaps the name. The plant is about 2 feet high and the blooms 1 1/4 inches across.

This purple version of the native passionflowers is larger than its yellow cousin (see images following). This flower is 3-4 inches across whereas the yellow ones are 1-1.5 inches. This one also was focus stacked manually at f22.

The yellow passionflower looks tropical but small. However, it is native to the Eastern and Central US. This plant was growing in my daughter's garden where it was a volunteer.

This spike of pokeweed is from the spring/early summer when the native flower is in full bloom. Note the pale spider hunting among the blooms.

This is the end of the pokeweed season. Although some spikes still have blooming flowers on them, many have ripened into mature seeds and are dropping off or being eaten by the birds. This image was manually focus stacked at f22.

This is a large bush like "weed" that grows in woods all over the east coast. I grows to about the height of a man or larger. I picked these branches to photograph because there was an inch worm dining on one of the flowers on the bottom spike. Turns out there is one on the top spike, too. Can you find it? The berries turn dark blue when ripe.

I am familiar with the symmetry of clematis flowers when they bloom but never really paid any attention to them when the go to seed--that is until now. The symmetry is still there and the seeds are like feathers barely attached to what's left of the bloom. I think it is an interesting image. It is focus stacked manually at f22, which I think works out pretty well.

This flower is called Maryland Meadow Beauty but it was shot right here in NC where it is a native wildflower. It was growing at the pond behind my house where they can't mow quite as short. A sad note: they used to mow not at all and we had a profusion of meadow flowers. Now they are limited to the strip near the pond where it's hard for the mower to reach. Such progress!

The time is ripe. I had the time. So, another take on ironweed while it is in full bloom. Focus stacked manually at f22.

While the Queen Anne's Lace is getting to the end of its season--see image below--the Ironweed is going strong. This image was focus stacked at f22 manually. Does a pretty good job.

Ironweed is one of the native plants I have introduced into my garden. The flower clusters are bright purple in the summer and this is what happens after the flowers are gone. The bees and all the garden critters love this plant. This image is a focus stacked macro.

It is the end of the Queen Anne's Lace season and while there are still some blooms, most of the faded blooms are well on their way to producing viable seeds.

This image is focus stacked. The flowers are in a small vase which can barely be made out. I wanted to get this one because the flowers are just opening up.

This is a native vine in NC but seldom seen because the flowers, while striking, are carried under the leaves as the vine creeps along the ground. The bloom is shaped like a meerschaum pipe, hence the name.

Where I live the wisteria is everywhere right now: trees, fences, poles, etc. Not good for the trees for sure but beautiful for the rest of us. This is my take on all these blooms. This is not focus stacked but instead is f32.

This was a red bud tree but clearly not any shade of red. This images was shot with a hand held camera using a 65 mm lens. It turned out pretty well given how it was acquired.

Google tells me this is Pennsylvania Sedge. I am not sure on my own. In fact, I didn't even know that I had it in my front yard. The blooms come up on sturdy stems directly out of the ground and are not among the leaves. It is a little beauty.

Spring has come very early this year--it is barely mid-February and already the ornamental cherries are in full bloom. Nice but a real worry for climate change. This is not focus stacked; in fact, I seldom do that any more. It is shot a f/27 which with this lens gives about the best sharpness in combination with depth of field. Higher f-stops up to f/45 do get diffraction error and lower f-stops lose the depth of field.

In trying to be more eco friendly in my plantings, I put in a native aster. It is as happy as it could be and is going great guns. It blooms in the fall and here is one spray of blooms.

I have been trying to make the plantings around my house more eco friendly, which they definitely are not at the moment. I planted so milkweed for the stressed Monarch Butterflies and also because milkweed has lovely, fragrant flower clusters. I had just one year's growth on the milkweed and got four Monarch caterpillars. They pretty much ate some of the plants to the ground. Sadly, I am not sure if any of the caterpillars made it to butterflies because I could not find even one chrysalis but I hope so.

This bush, which I believe is a spirea variant, blooms early before the leaves are out. It is subtle, and I love it subtlety. This is not a focus stacked image, obviously. I prefer this way of making an image so that the flower is in focus and the surrounds drift into a soft bokeh.

See above.

See above.

This image appealed to me because of the spray flowers roughly in the same focal plane and because I really cranked up my lens to do it. This image is f45 not focus stacked. I think the depth of field pretty much has it.

It is mid-February and warm and the ornamental cherry in the front yard is starting to bloom. Looks good. Yes, this image is placed against a black background and focus stacked.

The dragonflies are kaput but the blue-eyed grasshoppers are going to town on the sagittaria.

See above.

Not all the colorful critters in the garden/pond are butterflies and dragonflies. Some are grasshoppers, like this one and the following. The images were taken with approximately a 200mm telephoto stabilized on a monopod. Obviously, that meant high ISO and high shutter speed at about a f-stop of 11.

See above.

See above.

See above.

They say that dragonflies are jewels on the wing. I am inclined to agree with that. I have been spending some time at my nearby pond because Covid doesn't let me go to the Tetons or anyplace much else.

This is another in my recent series. I strove to get this one head on, not always easy to do.

This guy--or gal--not sure how you tell--sat in this spot for a long time so I have a hundred shots of this critter.

See above.

The sunflowers are fading but there is still some sugar say in some of the flowers. Enough to draw a lot of bees.

This macro image of the center of a sunflower shows the intricate structure of the stamens, pistels, developing seeds, and--most importantly--the tiny droplets of nectar the so welcome the bees and butterflies.

The sunflowers in this 5 acre garden were alive with bees going after the little droplets of nectar.

This swallowtail butterfly, a little the worse for wear, is sunning itself in the early morning and will soon get its breakfast from the nectar on the flower.

The structure of the back of the sunflower makes for an interesting study.

This striking dragonfly was from the pond behind my house. While shooting him with a telephoto, I captured a flyby by a blue dragonfly from the same pond.

At my previous residence I had a waterfall and two ponds. The dragonflies loved the ponds. This is probably my best of all time. He or she held a great pose and I had a 600 mm telephoto.

As noted in the image above, the dragonflies loved my pond and I miss it. This guy/gal was published once upon a time.

I took an outing to a water garden this morning where a number of lotuses and lilies and other water plants were blooming. I deliberately selected the blossoms that were less than perfect for my subjects.

I thought this one was better in monochrome.

This is the same view as the image that starts this series but including more of the background reveals a seed pod.

I worked particularly hard with this image to keep the colors very soft and do the best justice I could to the original.

You have to have one that is basically just pretty.

I am not big on photographing lilies. They somehow don't just send me like the lotuses do.

It is getting warm and I got out today to catch some of the spring growth and blooms. This is not a macro lens but just one with great resolution.

Spring flowers. Again, not a macro lens.

I like this one about the best of the three, so saved it for last.

This image is my attempt at a visual haiku. It was a misty day with droplets on the flowers and branches. It is a simple composition in monochrome with no distracting elements. The flower is a holdover from summer on a bush that is bare of leaves and has very few of its abundant summer flowers holding on into the winter.

This image was my attempt to photograph a flower out of season in a haiku esthetic. This is a slightly more close up version of the one above but, as the image below shows, lent itself to another kind of image.

Whereas in the image above the plane of focus was on the bloom, in this image the plane of focus is on the water droplet. If you look closely at the water droplet, the surrounding bush and trees are in inverted form in the droplet.

This is a different bloom from the ones above and is more close up. Again, the bush and surrounding trees can be seen in the water droplet.

I have been trying to get a Japanese haiku look in some of my more recent flower Macro images. I have increased the yellow in the background and on the lone leaf. Some extraneous branches have also been taken out.

I put a Kudzu flower spike in my gallery, the first image above. This is more of a close-up on the flowers themselves. They are really quite striking.

Kudzu is a terrible, invasive vine that has gone wild in the US since being imported from Asia. Nonetheless, there is a more attractive side to a bad actor. I had never seen its blooms. Sadly, I have a lot in some woods behind my house, but the blooms are beautiful. Here is one. Please notice the beetle in the upper left hand corner. There are several other bugs as well.

Blue Eyed Grass is my favorite wildflower. The blooms are less than 1/2 inch across and they last a day. I first encountered it in my prairie garden in the Midwest. It grew in the wooded area on my property in Maryland and I brought some with me when I moved to the Mid-South. I didn't need to. It grows natively here, even where they mow every week or so. It is tough as well as beautiful. Focus stacked.

This little guy is in full bloom right now in the woods behind my house and along the roads. Again, I have not seem this plant in other places where I have lived so another one for North Carolina.

This asparagus fern has been in my family since my grandmother's days. It was usually strictly a house plant and struggled along often looking dried out. When it finally passed on to me, I started putting it outside only to find that it loved it, thrived, and bloomed every year. It also made red berry seeds in the fall. This is the blooms. The entire individual flower is somewhere between 1/16th and 1/8th inch in size although the clusters are bigger. This is a macro but not a focus stacked image. I didn't like the focus stacked ones nearly as well since I thought everything should fade into the background rather than being artificially crisp.

Before you look at the next image, I thought it would be useful to have a metric to indicate the size of the Asparagus Fern Blossoms. The blossoms are photographed above a standard ruler. As you can see, the blooms are about 1/8th inch across.

I put up this second image of an asparagus fern blooming because I finally got a better image of the blooms. This is hard to do since they are buried among leaves and stems and are tiny, tiny little flowers. This is a macro, not focus stacked, but I finally got three blossoms pretty much in focus together with a bud or two. A few days work in all of this.

This little guy grows everywhere I have ever been and I have spent a lot of time pulling it up out of my garden and lawn. Decided to take a look and the flowers, though small, are quite beautiful. Don't think I will view it the same way again.

This is called Sweet Autumn Clematis and it is fragrant. It is an import for gardens but it is vigorous and has gone invasive. This bunch was growing luxuriantly by the roadside.

This little meadow flower was growing in a sometimes mowed area in the back of my property near a pond. It is very slightly pink running to lavender but the stamens and pistil are bright yellow. This image focuses on the flower and one bud. Like all wild flowers it gets chewed on and protects itself with spines.

The focus here is less on the Virginia Meadow Beauty Flower and more on its life cycle: bud, bloom, shrivel on the way to seeds.

This little guy grows on the side of the road where there is regular mowing so they are not much more than 3-4 inches high. Brilliant gold petals, however, and a striking border along the road at this time of year.

I took one of the clematis blooms and brought it inside where I could set up a black background to emphasize its colors. Caught the vase looking jewel-like as well. Focus stacked.

I am learning what I have in my backyard after about a year in place. This Japanese Beauty Bush is one of the surprises.

Again, a surprise in my back yard. Hats off to those who did the original plantings.

This Butter Weed grows where it gets mowed so it is tough but also quite striking.

I ordered flowers for a special occasion and some of the cut ones have proved remarkably durable so I did a focus-stacked image.

I am a relatively new owner of the property so I have surprises every spring and summer. I did not know that I had Lantanas in my yard. Here one is moved inside to get rid of the effects of the wind.

This is a common "weed" growing in field like settings, often where it is mowed so it is a tough customer.

These dogwood blossoms were taken at a distance using a mild telephoto lens. I was surprised at the clarity and detail given the manner of acquiring the image.

This photography of Blue Eyed Grass was taken down a path into some woods behind my house. The path is regularly mowed so all the plants and flowers are low to the ground.

This flower is tiny. The blooms are roughly 1/4 inch across. It grows on a tall spike out of a rosette of leaves close to the ground. It is a beauty in miniature. It may also be Texas Toadflax but it is surely in that family. Focus stacked. Sadly a few days ago someone sprayed where this was growing and all the plants were killed. Silliness and destructiveness.

Everyone knows clematis and this has been a banner year for them: maybe the warm winter and rainy spring. Anyway, they have been luxuriant.

I am tole that is the name of the little flower. I can't verify that from my own knowledge but since I am not sure what it is, I will go with it. Focus stacked.

I don't have peonies in my yard or around so these were a gift. They are focus stacked.

Not sure exactly what this flower is. But it is from the pond in my back yard and I like it.

I am not sure what this tough little guy is. These very fibrous blooming stalks grow about 3 feet high and on the top are clusters that bloom and then turn to seed clusters. The flowers are very attractive but very small--about 1/4 to 1/3 inch across. This is a focus stacked version. See the next image for a macro but not focus stacked version of the flowers.

This is a macro version of the more general image above. Again, I am not sure of the name of this plant which is certainly hardy and tough but not very attractive until you get up close.