The heart of a tulip!

My "third daughter" Marjorie and I drove to Topeka to photograph the tulips at the Ted Ensley Garden.   My favorites from the images I took are shown below.  On most of my images, I used a macro feature of my 90nm Sony lens so that I could get in close to photograph the "heart" of some tulips.  Macro photography is like viewing nature from a different world!  It's amazing!

In a few days I will share Marjorie's tulip images in the form of a slideshow, so be on the lookout!

Woo hoo! March 23 is National Puppy Day!

We would be remiss if we didn't share images of our puppy Toto and Charlie (who is past puppy stage) for National Puppy Day! :)  The other evening, I spent some time capturing Toto and Charlie as they played outside. They are like two little kids when they have our attention as they love to show off!  They always want what the other one has.  Isn't that like human, I mean puppy nature?  I've included my favorite captures of them taken during the beautiful "golden hour!"  Enjoy!

California trip revisited

I often revisit images from past trips on my computer to see if I missed a good stock image.  Stock photography is a hobby of mine.  It's not a big money maker but does bring in a little bit of extra cash.  I'm an exclusive member of dreamstime.com with over 1,730 images.  That being said, recently going over images from a Palm Springs trip, I found these images that I'm submitting for stock photography.  Enjoy!

The first four images were taken during a jeep tour in the Joshua Tree National Park.  It was in February so it wasn't hot.

We stopped by the Thousand Palm Oasis Preserve in the Coachella Valley where I photographed this carved tree that was among tall palm trees.

We had a nice view from the vacation rental backyard.  Way off in the distance you can see the light starting to shine from the Palm Springs tram on top of the mountain.

 Fresh oranges were available to eat from the trees in the yard.

We always try to grill jumbo shrimp and steak when we stay at a vacation rental.  It was my birthday so a good cause to celebrate! :)

The yard was private and had a swimming pool. We were alone except for some wildlife that visited.  This northern mocking bird is watching us from a hole in the bush.

Country sunsets, dried wildflowers and ranch animals

There's something so relaxing about country sunsets!  The two just below were taken on different days before the weather starting turning cold.  Even after wildflowers die, they still have a beauty of their own. 

Though the cattle we leased on our property left in November along with our neighbor's horses leaving also for the winter, we included a few images of them for your viewing pleasure.  Enjoy!

We named her "Toto"

For those that didn't know we lost our other Toto in a car accident August 22.  At the time we thought it best not to replace him.  Well, when I saw four little Rat Terrier puppies on craigslist yesterday that looked just like Toto, we had to get one!  We decided to also name her Toto, like the dog on the Wizard of Oz.  Did you know that the Wizard of Oz Toto was a female?  I didn't know that or we wouldn't have named our other Toto that name.  Meet Toto our baby girl puppy!  She is 10 weeks old and looks like she will fit perfectly into our family.  Charlie is enjoying her now though it was an adjustment for both of them the first day as you can see by the images below.  Toto will probably outgrow Charlie as she is a larger Rat Terrier and has the paws to show for it!

Autumn flowers attract pretty moths and butterflies

This image below is the dried part of a blue wild-indigo wildflower.  I think this part of the flower looks ugly when in bloom, but like it dried and photographed at sunset!

This dried ironweed wildflower took on a pastel hue with their hairy seed pods.  They are normally purple and can take over a country field.

I like the teal-colored, out-of-focus background on this dried purple coneflower taken with my macro lens!

These Hedge-hog prickly-poppy wilflowers bloom late in the year and its name fits it perfectly! Prickly!!!!!

Another late bloomer is the dotted gayfeather wildflowers which attracted this silver-spotted skipper moth.  I read that these moths almost never visit yellow flowers but I caught them in the rare act on the second image below on some yellow goldenrod.

The painted lady butterflies were very much in abundance this past season.  They seemed to be everywhere when driving along our country road.  Here's one on a dried thistle wildflower.

Sunflowers and a cute little pest!

When I first saw this green and black spotted bug I thought it was a green lady bug.  After researching, I discovered there is no such insect!  This cute little bug is a major agricultural pest, as it eats or damages the leaves of crops.  Along with a few images of this beetle, there are also some macro images of sunflowers to include one with a honeybee.  Did I mentioned that I LOVE sunflowers!  Enjoy!