A Photo A Day For 6 Months: Day 141~ Bzzzzzz

"The only reason for making a buzzing noise that I know of is because you're a bee. The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey. And the only reason for making hones is so I can eat it."

~A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh, The House At Pooh Corner

Bzzzzzz. I love photographing busy, buzzy things flying about in my rose garden. And I marvel at that because there was a day when just the thought of being in close proximity to bees or any other creature with a stinger would have terrified me. Well, I had good reason, you see my mother was highly allergic to bees, and apparently somewhat suicidal, because she planted in her garden every bee enticing flower she could find. On especially hot summer days, she would put on her garden hat, and her gloves, and head out to tend her flowers, or as it seemed to me and everyone else in the family, to dare the bees to sting her.

My mother did things like that.

 

One day, after my father went to work, and my sister went to school, mom set about on her daily walk on the wild side, because the "plants needed tending." I didn't go with her as I usually did. I was happy to sit inside with my dog, but I did watch from the window. It was the usual drill, she visited each plant, checking for aphids or some loathsome creature, but in the middle of all the usual, she suddenly stood up straight, grabbed her arm and promptly fell backwards.

My pup and I went running to her, to see what had happened, but deep down I already knew... she had been stung. I could hear her laboring to breathe, and without reacting I screamed for the next door neighbor to come help, as I ran inside for the small brown kit the doctor had prescribed for her. By the time I got back to the yard, my neighbor was there and talking to her. The neighbor took the syringe from the kit, and injected her with the Epinephrine.

I only saw that happen one time, but believe me, once was enough.



I am not allergic to bees. I always knew this, but just the thought of them being around me made my skin crawl. It took many, many years to learn to appreciate their magnificent beauty. I love Bumble Bees, and Honey Bees, and I have had definitely made my peace with them. I could live without Killer Bees, and Wasps. Hornets just plain give me the creeps, but not as much as they once did. Mud Daubers are dreadful little creatures. One day, Alan and I found a nest over the door on the inside of our storage unit. Blech.

I think I am mostly happy about being able to get past my aversion to flying creatures. I have learned that if you have aphids in your garden, and Home Depot doesn't have a supply of Lady Bugs for sale, you can instead purchase Praying Mantis (The State Bird Of Texas By The Way) and they will eat all the aphids in your garden in a relatively short amount of time. They are good guys, but I will always ask for the Lady Bugs first. It's hard to be put off by anything called "Lady." LOL.

Sometime I will share about why and how I know that the Praying Mantis is the state bird of Texas. I will have to save that for another time. But as a teaser... it involved a bus, 3:00 AM, a roadside diner, in Where-The-Hell-Am-I-Texas and (and I kid you not) a waitress named Flo. LOL. Ahh yes, summertime, summertime... good times, good times. LOL.

Okay, so tell me, do you mind small flying creatures? Which ones do you kinda dislike? Are you allergic to bees?

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."

~Marilyn Monroe

Trivia Bonus: LOL. The actual State Bird Of Texas is the Mockingbird. But I can make make a good case with the Praying Mantis. ;)



~Me :)



 

On A Mid-Summer Afternoon...

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer...
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.


~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


If all summers were like this one, I could really come to love summer! Can you believe it, it's sunny and 64 degrees outside. All the roses in my flower garden are in bloom, and pretty soon we will have some amazing sunflowers to compliment everything. I even found 16 little Heirloom tomatoes growing on the tomato vine. The garden is just bustling with life. It makes me feel so alive and at peace. :) Today, I am not dwelling on all the bad stuff, I am just enjoying whats going right!

-Carly

On One Of Those Perfect Summer Days...Welcome Back Laura Ling and Euna Lee!

From For Ellipsis

"Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drink with the belief that alls right with the world."

-Ada Louise Huxtable

Yesterday, Alan and I decided to break from our routine and take a trip over to San Francisco, to enjoy the beautiful sunshine in the park, and have a walk around the Museum at the Legion of Honor. Every first Tuesday of the month are free, so it makes for a nice, inexpensive way to spend the day. :) After we finished appreciating the beautiful art, when had a picnic lunch at the Dahlia Garden in Golden Gate Park. That's where I spotted that happy bumble bee you see above. While on the way home, we heard about the release of the two female journalists being held in North Korea! That made an already wonderful day just a little better! I am so happy that President Clinton was able to win their release. He did good as our president, and he is still doing good for this country. GO BILL!

WELCOME BACK Euna Lee and Laura Ling!

(Click the above link to visit the Current TV Website and leave the a message!)

Happiness. It's a good thing. I am happy today. I hope you are too!

-Carly

Beep Beep :)

"Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office, and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once."

-Isaac Asimov

This was a fun moment last week. It was absolutely gorgeous in Golden Gate Park, the dahlias are really putting on a show, and there were a few winged creatures flying about. Especially the bumble bees. I am still pursuing my goal for the summer, of capturing a perfect photo of a bumble in mid flight. It came close a few times last week, but it was really windy, and that made it almost impossible. I caught a few, but either they were too far away in the photo, or they were out of focus, or I would get just a part of the bee. A leg here, a head shot there. LOL. It was a lot of fun, but it was a lot of work, especially after a particularly rough therapy session with Sarah. Therapy is a lot of work too.

I really didn't mind the work of either though, because they balance each other quite nicely. Both sides of my brain get a workout. LOL My concentration was pretty high that day, and it was an intense moment when I settled in on this flower, with the bumble bee in the center. I had been watching it for about 5 minutes, floating in and out of the other dahlias, and I thought I had my timing down, as to when it would lift off. I steadied myself, leaned in, and just as I thought she might take to flight, I took the photo. LOL. She of course didn't move, but as I went click, a lovely skipper butterfly, zoomed past the bee, the flower, and my lens. Tee Hee. I had to laugh, because it was amazingly fun to capture the skipper in flight, but at the same time, it also felt a bit like I had stepped into a Roadrunner cartoon, and I was the coyote. As the skipper flew by, I could almost hear... "Beep, Beep!" ROFL.

-OndineMonet
"Beep Beep"
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, California
Aug 1, 2007
Afternoon

My July Bumble Bee

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Golden Gate Park has an amazing Dahlia garden. It is tucked back from the road, and sits next to the Conservatory of Flowers. It comes magically alive in the summer, and it is one of my favorite places on earth. I find it especially inviting on days after I go to therapy. Therapy has healed me, but like with any discipline one learns, it can be very painful as time takes care of what ails you. I usually come out of those appointments exhausted, so sometimes going out with the camera can be difficult, but I know that using the camera to look at the beauty in the world, to focus on something other then how torn up I feel, is the way to process those secret inner feelings we all carry around. I decided a couple years ago, to have a subject, something specific to search for, when I am needing to do that kind of mental processing. This summer, I have chosen the bumble bee.

I think I am getting better with my bee photos. I am learning about light and shadows. I am really learning about timing. LOL. These are happy little critters. The can also be quite a tease. LOL. It was hard to not take this bee's personality quirks personally. LOL. Just as I found a comfortable way to stand, just as I got the setting right and the wind would stop blowing, just as I was about to snap the photo, this bee would happily buzz away to a new blossom. I swear I could almost hear her giggle as she flew by me. LOL. Almost.

I stuck with it, and here you see what I got, but not without a good deal of patience. I still haven't gotten the perfect shot of a bumble in flight. It will come. I am going to visit the Dahlia garden at least once a week this summer, at least until my garden begins to blossom. It will be another four weeks or so, before it's ready, but it should be very colorful when it does. I am putting some dahlia's in the pots this week for a mid-autumn bloom. Purples and oranges. It should be ready, just as my therapy comes to a close. Nice timing I think. :) Yep, I'm a happy camper.

So tell me, when you are out with your camera, do you ever give yourself "assignments?" Do you ever use your photography as a way to process what ails you?

-OndineMonet
"My July Bumble Bee"
Dahlia Garden
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, California
July 11th, 2007
Afternoon

Bumble Bee Tongues

"For many 19th century artists, the usual reaction to photography was no reaction at all. They simply ignored it. But not Degas. He was deeply interested in the new medium, not just as a tool that could help with his drawings and paintings, but as an art form in its own right."

-Edward Saywell

Can you believe it? It was cloudy and kind of cold yesterday, at least I was cold. Elvis was by my side most of the day, I think he knows when I am not 100%. Sigh. I have been having nightmares again. Nightmares are the most inconvenient things. It's so strange how we can be sound asleep, and yet transported forward or backward in time, to places we have long since forgotten about, visiting with people we know we will never see again. The surreal can seem so vivid. Like I said, nightmares are inconvenient.

That's why I take pictures. Photography allows me to step into the surreal with a certain amount of control. I love taking photos of gardens, because there is so much going on, and everything changes in a blink. It takes a great deal of concentration to photograph butterflies and bumble bees, especially on a warm, sunny day. It's a good thing, but it is definitely a challenging thing. I don't know... my mind gets completely filled with whatever scene is in front of me. The flowers, the things with wings, the sky... whatever. Everything else gets blocked out. At least it seems that way. Maybe that is why I have nightmares when I haven't been particularly active with the camera.

Of course, it might also mean it wasn't a good idea to eat 8 Jalapeno Poppers at 3:00 in the morning. LOL. Jeepers, that is why I dreamed the hills that surround the house I live in were on fire! Could be. Or it could have just been my mind reminding me of my lifelong fear of fire. I have conquered a good many fears and phobias. I took charge of my life, and eliminated panic attacks from ruining my life, but I have never been able to cure my fear of fire. I try to photograph fire when I can. When Alan barbecues, I am right there with the camera, snapping away. Still... the fear continues. Maybe my dream was saying, "Get over it girl."

I used to be absolutely scared to death of bumble bees. Now I seek them out, so much so that recently I was on my stomach in Golden Gate Park, photographing some bumbles that were enjoying some dandelions. LOL. I had to laugh at myself, because it was just a few years ago that I would have left the park, for fear of bees. Silly of me, because look how beautiful they are. They have such interesting lines, and who knew they have tongues? :) It never occurred to me they would, until I was licked by a butterfly last year at the Conservatory of Flowers. LOL. It seems I had a little bit of maple syrup on my hand, left over from a pancake breakfast I had eaten earlier that day. Talk about surreal... being licked by a butterfly, is surreal! Almost as surreal as watching an opossum use it's thumbs. But that is a whole other entry. LOL. It's not supposed to be cold in July... is it?

-OndineMonet
"The Bumble Bee's Tongue"
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, California
Late June, 2007

Life In The Bay Area

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."

-Kahil Gibran

Sometimes, the nicest part about life in the Bay Area, is the rich availability of natural beauty. I am minutes from the beach, and the mountains, and both provide all the things which soothe my soul, and inspire my creativity. Soft sand beneath my toes, and a cool ocean breeze, or the soft petals of an amazing summer rose, grown right in my own yard. I am at home. I love it here. :)

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and the music in it's roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more.

-Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

-OndineMonet
Pacifica, California
June 27, 2007
Afternoon