They’re back, part 3
Click for greater clarity and better color.
Continuing with the earlier-than-usual sunflowers in Austin this year, here’s the center of a fully open flower head from the group of plants I photographed on April 19. Notice the small bug at 1 o’clock and the much smaller larva at 9 o’clock that were visiting the sunflower. Sights like this remind me that before Europeans brought honeybees to the Americas, all the plants here somehow managed to get themselves pollinated without a word of English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Dutch ever having been heard in this hemisphere.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
That’s an interesting thought… life without language. Lovely photo Steve!
Cathy
May 4, 2012 at 6:41 AM
But life without language would put most bloggers out of commission. Every day would be a wordless Wednesday.
Steve Schwartzman
May 4, 2012 at 7:09 AM
Eruption solaire. Magnifique.
lancoliebleue
May 4, 2012 at 6:50 AM
Moi aussi je crois y voir des rayons solaires.
Steve Schwartzman
May 4, 2012 at 7:18 AM
So many of these photos make me wish I were a jeweler. This one? A cloisonné broach, with a cluster of jewel in the middle. I think I’d even keep the bug.
Your comments about language reminded me of a little image I created.
shoreacres
May 5, 2012 at 9:40 AM
I, too, wish a were a jeweler who could turn some of these pictures into ornaments. Maybe I can team up with a jeweler.
Thanks for the link to your green image and its thought from the Tao Te Ching; the cat’s eyes match the grass.
Steve Schwartzman
May 5, 2012 at 11:34 AM
“all the plants here somehow managed to get themselves pollinated without a word of English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Dutch ever having been heard in this hemisphere.” Better than esperanto!
Susan Scheid
May 5, 2012 at 6:37 PM
Esperanto is the first foreign language I ever dabbled in; I think I was in 6th grade. It sounds like you’ve had dealings with it as well.
Steve Schwartzman
May 5, 2012 at 6:44 PM
I have a sunflower photo that I was quite proud of.. until I saw yours, lol! How do you do it?? Well, I know how, you’re so talented a photographer!!
Just A Smidgen
May 8, 2012 at 2:49 PM
Thanks for your kind words, Barbara. I do practice a lot, a whole lot. I also filter, not in the technical photographic sense, but in the exposition sense; there are plenty of images that I conceive but fail to capture to my satisfaction, in which case I don’t show them. So far, as long as I’ve kept putting myself out in nature enough, there have always been at least some reasonably good photographs to show for it.
Steve Schwartzman
May 8, 2012 at 3:09 PM
Beautiful. 🙂
Glynn
May 10, 2012 at 9:46 PM
These sunflowers are all that still survives of nature on the property that’s being developed.
Steve Schwartzman
May 10, 2012 at 9:50 PM