Road A, just off Highway 56

I was looking for landscapes along the Morris County border this evening, scouting back roads and watching the rapidly changing light model the hills. Things weren’t coming together yet, so I scanned wild things along the roadside.

On the back roads I keep my eye open for wildflowers, critters and natural grasses, gradually building up my library of images. A common visitor to the wildflowers, tiny metallic green “sweat bees” (Halictidae) are a personal favorite. The colors are gorgeous. But they are very tiny and move quickly, which makes’em a bugger to photograph. The bees in these photos are about a 1/4 inch in length. I watched them climb deep into the flowers for pollen and nectar, roll around a bit, then peek a head out before streaking toward another blossom. Maybe it was the pollen dust, but these little guys sparkled. It was like a wild candy apple paint job on a hot rod.

Above, sunlight refracts off segments of an orb spider’s web.

I went into the woods today just looking for trouble. And this afternoon the backwoods were pretty unpleasant. Along a river section of forest it was dense, dark and hot. The spaces between the trees were tangled with old and new webs. Poison ivy littered the ground and mosquitoes were thick in the air. But this is the Hilton if you’re a woods spider. Build your trap then it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. We’ll never know how a spider experiences life. Maybe there are special joys and wonders only appreciated by that realm of existence, though I suspect arachnid reality is primal, compulsive.  But the web of life is intricate beyond understanding and not without its mysteries, so my imagination sometimes circles around such things.

Lately I’ve taken to close-up photography of common plants, uncovering an incredible store of unsuspected texture. Also, as gardeners know well, every plant hosts a community. Ants, bees, flies…. small frogs like to nest in flowers. Focus in on…. anything… and you’ll find it teeming with life, each creature in turn hosting its own community of even smaller creatures.

Below, tiny ants toil on the petals of a Russian sage blossom.

The above image is highly magnified. This will help give a sense of scale:

This morning: a small sweat bee pollinates a compass plant blossom along a country road west of Americus.  The bees were a gorgeous metallic green, their sides caked with layers of bright yellow pollen.

Below, the bristly textures of a wilted compass plant blossom.