It’s been a busy month so it was great to have a bit of downtime this afternoon in the backyard garden enjoying the sun and a cold beer to celebrate the end of the teaching year. Both of the kids were out in the yard and I was nominally on child minding duty when I spotted a dragonfly basking on …
Garden
Garden Mustards
Kale (Brassica oleracea) flowers are quite beautiful. A couple of days ago I found some Field Mustard (Brassica campestris) down by the Courtenay Estuary and in photographing the plant I got to thinking how similar the flowers looked to the flowers on the kale (Brassica oleracea) that overwintered in our backyard garden. At this time of year the kale have …
Winter is Golden
Goldenrod (Solidago sp.) While we’ve removed the old sunflower stalks and blackened seed heads from our back alley flower bed we’re still enjoying the seeds of the goldenrod as we roll into the dark gray days of December. We’ve noticed that many of the sparrows, finches and other songbirds that frequent our feeders are visiting the seeds of the Solidago …
Back in the Garden
With two young children it’s often difficult to get out to a new location to photograph. As a result, I usually have to revisit a location that I’ve photographed before – the challenge then becomes how to create new images with the same subjects. Taking the time to look at details, repositioning the camera and playing with depth of field …
What Wasp is That?
I spent some time this week in my mother-in-law’s garden photographing wasps, bees and other insects but am finding it challenging to identify them. These wasps were unconcerned about me being close to them. As a result, I was able to get some good photographs of these fascinating insects. I’m working on identifying conclusively the insects pictured below. The photographs …
Sunflower Yellow
Sunflower Petals 1 The first year that we moved to our little house in Courtenay we decided that we wanted to do something different with our back lane. Both Jocie and I love sunflowers so we thought that it would be really cool to plant some on the other side of our back fence beside the road. Since our backyard …
More Garden Insects
Given that I had little success photographing bumble bees on my last visit to our garden I was determined to try again. One of the advantages of using a digital SLR instead of film that you can capture an unlimited number of images without having to worry about cost. This is beneficial when trying to photograph moving garden insects! Bumble …
Zen In the Garden
We’re lucky enough to have a backyard garden despite living close to the center of Courtenay. Not only is our garden a source of food for us, many insects (and other animals) visit as well. I spent some time watching bumble bees and honey bees gathering pollen and nectar but was really fascinated by the work of wasps and hornets …