Photos of the day and Quote for the day, Sunday, April 21, 2013

On my climb today I found the first wildflowers of the season.

Now, perhaps the Scarlet Hedgehog Cactus is not considered a wildflower, but in my book, it counts, and this is my book.

This particular cactus was just next to another that was about to burst into twenty to thirty blooms, which I hope to shoot next weekend.  This was found at the start of my walk at 6,500 ft or so. I have to say that I was so taken by the bright red flowers that I stopped my hike and ended up sitting down in the trail trying to compose a nice close up shot. Next week I hope to get the larger grouping.

After climbing nearly 2,000 additional feet, I almost missed this next flower, but the  yellow caught my eye.  It sits on the top of a solid wall of granite, finding a toehold in a crack in the rock.

The flower is from the mustard family, called Fendler’s Bladderpod.  It is very very small, about the size of a third of a dime, if that.  Once again, I found myself on the ground will all thoughts of a quick climb a distant memory.

I ended up taking 17 different images of this flower, primarily because in the macro mode I can’t really see how sharp the image is in the view finder.  I hope that quantity will ultimately produce one or two images of quality.

During the two minutes of exposures, the plant had a visitor that I was able to capture at what I consider the perfect moment.

Here you can see one of our Alien species, visiting a flower during a refueling mission.

Next, it gets down to business, the business of refueling.

I’m also going to add a quote for the day here, something I just discovered that  has what I consider a very sloppy translation that can be found all over the web.  I think that this is a more accurate version:

Learn to see, that’s the whole secret of natural studies.

George Sand pseudonym for Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant (1804-1876)

Granted, I have no knowledge of French, but for those who do, here is the original.  Apprendre à voir, voilà tout le secret des études naturelles.