iSee Ladybugs

Ladybugs all dressed in red
Strolling through the flowerbed.
If I were tiny just like you
I’d creep among the flowers too!
- Maria Fleming -

The Ladybug wears no disguises.
She is just what she advertises.
A speckled spectacle of spring,
A fashion statement on the wing….
A miniature orange kite.
A tiny dot-to-dot delight.
- J. Patrick Lewis, “The Little Buggers” -

The ladybug’s a beetle.
It’s shaped like a pea.
Its color is a bright red
With lots of spots to see.
Although the name is ladybug
Some ladybugs are men.
So why don’t we say “gentleman bug”
Every now and then?
- Author Unknown -

How brave a ladybug must be!
Each drop of rain is big as she.
Can you imagine what you’d do,
If raindrops fell as big as you?
- Aileen Fisher -

_______________

SLIDESHOW: Click on any photo to open a slide show. Press your ‘es-ca-pay’ button to close the slide show.

_____________

COMMENTS are disabled for gallery posts such as this. If you have a ladybug story to share, click on the following link and choose one of the posts: Ladybugs

Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

Dory: [Reading a sign on a door] Hey, look. “Es-ca-pay”! Hey, it’s spelled just like escape.
- Dory the Blue Tang fish in the movie ‘Finding Nemo’ -

I always thought that Ford Motors should have used Dory’s mispronunciation of ‘Escape’ to promote their Ford Escape.  ‘Es-ca-pay’ sounds so much more daring than plain old ‘escape’.

When we were living in the Middle East, I drove a bright red Jeep Cherokee. One day a British women approached me (and my Jeep) and said, “Oh, I just love your Chur-o-key!” It took me a few seconds to realize that she was referring to my car. (Cherokee, to me, starts with a ‘chair’ sound, to her it starts with a ‘chur’ as in church sound.)
The lesson I learned from my years overseas is that there is more than one way to pronounce a great many words, and the sooner you accept that, the more fun language becomes.  I can ‘es-ca-pay in my chur-o-key’ – what words are you willing to liberate?

There is a hill behind the cabin and at the very top is a huge pasture. We often see horses up there, yet we never see them down in our valley. I don’t really understand why they don’t escape from their confines – the fence is down in many places.

I suppose, to the horses, the grass is simply not greener on the other side of the fence. They do not want to ‘es-ca-pay’!

_________________

Other barbed wire photos: Macro Monday – Poked

Surprise in the Ditch

_________________

Other Photos for this Challenge: Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

A Yard Full of Prickles

He’d always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.”
- Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man -

We spent part of our winter in Arizona. The landscaping in our yard is more aptly called hardscaping since it is mostly paving stones and rock. There are a number of green plants – most of them of the prickly variety. Here they are, up close in all their spiny glory.

Golden Barrel Cactus

___________________

Fishhook Barrel Cactus

____________________

Possibly a type of Hedgehog Cactus

______________________________

Saguaro Cactus

________________

Prickly Pear Cactus

__________________

There is one animal that is not intimidated by the Prickly Pear Cactus. It is the Javelina. It looks much like a Wild Boar, but it isn’t. (For more information about this animal, here is an article called ‘Do Not Mess with Javelinas‘). I haven’t actually seen Javelinas in our yard, but I do know what they dine on – my Prickly Pear Cactus!

_____________________

My recent story about a cactus in bloom: Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense

Canada Geese – A Lofty View

Many of the old Cottonwood and Poplar trees at the Cabin have been transformed into odd shapes – a result of the weakness of heavy old branches in big wind storms. In the spring, the Canada Geese in our area land on the ‘platforms’ that have formed in these trees. The geese carry on loud conversations, and compete for the attention of – the females, I suppose. I’ve only ever seen them do this in the spring.

These two trees are on our property. The wide angle capability of my new Canon PowerShot SX50 lets me take an all encompassing photo like this from a relatively close position. This past week-end six Canada Geese landed in the trees in our yard. Can you see two of them  in these trees?

Can you see them now that I’ve cropped the photo?

One tree branch was big enough for two geese. . .

Until one goose muscled the other off the branch.

This is a photo I took with the zoom lens of the SX50. It is hand held, and the photo has not been  cropped or enhanced. The original photo is a much higher resolution, of course.

Zooming in even closer, this photo has a focal length of 215 mm, which is the maximum for the lens. I could have zoomed in even closer, but then I would have been using a digital zoom, not an optical one (digital zoom is in-camera image processing; optical zoom is the image that the lens captures.)

To put this story into perspective,  six 6kg (15 pound) birds took up positions in my back yard and started to squabble over landing rights. It was truly a memorable morning!

That reminds me, a saltwater crocodile, a great white shark and a Canada Goose walk into a bar….
- Author Unknown -